Isn't it time?

So I'm not allowed to talk about the epic thing that happened last night but I guess that's only fair as it didn't just involve me. (I asked the other person about 10 times if they were sure they didn't want me to talk about it and even though they were dozing, saying no 10 times usually means no doesn't it...? Grrrrrrr!)

Instead, I am going to take you on a journey with me! Every Saturday morning, I tutor a couple of kids- this Saturday morning was no different other than I knew I had a job to do. So as I left home this morning to catch the bus, I went to the dreaded coffee table, I lifted up the PGD booklet and fished out the two forms and I put them into my purple satchel:

This is me putting it into my bag!

Next, I made a funny sound that was a bit like, "Nerghplff!" and I left the house, put my headphones on and listened to M.I.A's Bad Girls which is slowly becoming my anthem. I remember it being used on The Mindy Project when Mindy gets her shit together and is all professional- I liked that and it reminds me of me. I can be a bit ditzy and clutzy at the best of times but when I need to, I get my shit together and get stuff done. This is my anthem to that.

The next bit was my normal tutoring bits, buses, walks, becoming confused by where houses are (I have no sense of direction.) Then I sorted out Max with his food and some treats (have realised that I spend more money on the sausage treats I buy Max than I do on a month's supply of sausages for Paul and myself...) and headed up to Eltham. I live tweeted the whole thing, like the proper social media whore that I am. I then chose the envelopes which were incredibly boring- no rainbows or amazing stars (where's paperchase when you need it?) but they did the job as I sat on the steps next to the Yak and Yeti restaurant on Eltham High street.

 Here's the end product in my loopy handwriting. As you can see, the stamp is wonky in the top right hand corner, a bit like my genes!

I then tried to take a picture as I posted it but for some reason, the screen flashed but no photo was taken but only realised this after I had shut my eyes, held my breath and popped it into the black void of Royal Mail who will hopefully escort it safely into the hands of the dreaded seventh floor of Guys Hospital! Again there was another strange noise- more of a release noise. Not in my hands anymore noise. Relief noise.

So after several cheerleader cries from the twitterati and Facebook (thank you everyone!), I headed off to find cake and chai to celebrate:

I've seen a couple of brilliant pictures that are entirely fitting of the PGD posting day:

This fits so well with the idea of it being time to bring those babies home. The healthy cuddly ones.

And this one fits with a dual meaning- enough shit now, time to get stuff done and also I feel brave for what I did today. I was finally strong enough to get the ball rolling.

Who Can I Turn To? (When Nobody Needs Me)

It's National Infertility Awareness Week in America- I'm not sure that we really have one here in the UK but a lot of my twitter friends (said in an Inbetweeners voice) have been posting blogs about issues they've come up against. Some people have written about the insensitivity of friends and family, others about the huge expense that IVF is and some about how their infertility issues are barely recognised, let alone understood by the medical profession. For me reading these blogs, it's both heartbreaking and a bit alien.

Such an odd situation as I guess I'm not a normal infertile. From the tests run last year, I have no weird shaped uterus, no polycystic ovaries, no endometriosis and I ovulate like clockwork on day 16 of each month. So I'm not really infertile at all just a bit genetically buggered really. Neither have I had any dickishness from friends and family about infertility (probably because they know I would slap 'em down like a bitch!)- in fact, lots of people have come forward about their experiences of losses and problems. To offer their love and support at a point, let's be frank, is a bitch of a time! 

As for my sort of infertility, there were no big surprises. I've known since I was tiny that I had wonky chromosomes. I know that there are some people who find out they have issues in their teens but I've known since a small child. Obviously, I didn't know all of the implications until I was 16 in that dreadful room on the seventh floor of Guys Tower but I've known a bloody long time. Also, I've got something that doesn't really affect my health much (as far as they know!) My wonky genes don't cause pain or discomfort, neither are they leading to some dreadful death (that we know of...!) My translocation is not an issue really until you start trying for a baby and it is recognised as being a "thing", although I have had to explain it to doctors who are non-fertility based.

As for the IVF, that's where I feel like the biggest bitch twat idiot on this planet. There's not a day that goes by where I don't thank my lucky stars that I was born post Aneurin Bevan. That I can ring my GP, drag my sorry arse to a hospital or go to a walk in centre, be treated for free and walk away with only a prescription charge of under £10 per item? I call that really bloody lucky. To make it worse, they then go and offer me not only IVF but PGD. Instead of it being £8-12000, you may have to pay for some drugs but other than that *F*R*E*E*. I have a particular friend in the US who has started a crowdfunder to get her an IVF cycle- read more about her here. She also makes some pretty jewellery which is also going towards her baby goal-and there's 50% off at the moment!Oh and where is that form that will get me free goes at having a baby with better chances of walking away with one to cuddle? Yep, still under my coffee table. Throughout my life, I've been accused of pissing my chances up the wall. At school, work and uni, not working to my full potential and messing around. I feel like that form is one of these opportunities.

It sits there bloody taunting me. Calling me a wuss. Every now and then, it shouts- telling me I'm a selffish cow when others can't afford treatment. Sometimes, it's kinder and asks why I haven't posted it yet but generally whenever I walk into the frontroom, I feel it rolling its eyes at me. 

The thing is I am infertile. I'm an infertile not because I have issues with getting pregnant. I have issues staying pregnant as you well know. I'm an infertile because even when I find that I'm pregnant, I will never feel any peace or joy in seeing those two lines. Two lines to me means loss. Another failure. It has now gotten to the stage that I don't think I would want to tell anyone except extremely close family (or my twitter buds) that we were expecting a baby until it was born. I'm bloody good at hiding in my house and I'm enough of a manipulative Scorpio that I would be able to spin a yarn about still drinking and smoking it up to make people believe that nothing had changed. 

PGD offers some kind of hope that there would be a decent enough embryo that would implant and lead to a healthy baby but it isn't a given and how many times can you toss your heart out there to have it mown down by some freaking huge articulated lorry (something I am really scared of. I hate articulated trucks. Oh and bridges.)?

For a while, I felt a bit of an outsider with the IF community on Twitter- especially when you think that I haven't been through IVF or had problems with getting pregnant but when it clicked that actually, I'm a wonky infertile and we have been trying to have a baby for 21months- almost two freaking years! I truly started to feel like I belonged and not in a "I'll favourite your tweets" or a "Here's a funny anecdote" way. We're all going through similarly different shit. We cry together. Understand the anger and confusion. We all "get" the lack of naivety that it brings. 

We also laugh together. I am now at the point that I walk down the street and think, "Shit, it was so and so's appointment today, I wonder how that went?" Or I'm in a department store and I see towels with foxes on and think of a particular member of the community. I was even on the underground the other day and saw a poster for an Orang-Utan exhibition and made a note to let one of the girls know. It is an obsession, keeping up with everyone's news and our little chats but I know one day, I won't get to be a part of it. I'll be pushed to one side where the pregnancies go as it is hard talking to people about something you have and they don't. Or I'll break away because it'll be time to move on. Time to leave the ovulation kits, the vitamins and the endless doctors appointments. Time to walk away from having a baby.

Right now, they're my lifeline. Whilst I feel trapped in the Stevie Smith poem, Not Waving But Drowning, they are the pod of dolphins keeping my chin above the water. 

So National Infertility Awareness Week, here's my UK offering to you. I am going to send that fucking form tomorrow as a thank you to all the love from the twitterati. My women and men in America especially as I have the opportunity to have something that you have to fight for.

Not for the necklace, Lauren ;)

Are you happy now?

I met up with my best friend yesterday. This is the girl with whom I have had a 27 year relationship and yet, I hadn't seen her since the beginning of November.

Yeah, that long.

Kat and I have been friends since we were tiny tear-aways in navy blue pinafores and bowler hats. We were very different to the other children that went to our primary- we were loud, refused to sit in a chair for too long and were constantly in trouble. One day, when we were about 4, she made a tiny mark on my work so whilst she was talking to the teacher, I calmly walked over to her place, picked up her work, scribbled on the table, put the work back down and walked away again. When she got into trouble, she knew I had done it- looked me dead in the face and grinned- that was it. Firm friends!

We spent days running around in each other's gardens, pretending to be flying cats, listening to Riki Tiki Tavi and irritating her older sister who was then sitting her A Levels. She was there when my little brother was born when I was 6- we still have the card her mum sent to my mum. We climbed trees and were generally quite wild together (read normal children). It had to come to an end though. She had to leave school as her mum and step dad were moving away from Blackheath out to the wilds of Kent. We then only met up during the holidays and for birthdays. Sadly, it came to a real end when Kat moved to France.

I'd lost my partner in crime to the continent. This is going to sound dramatic but there wasn't a single day that went by where I didn't think about her. Whenever a new girl started, I would make a beeline, trying to replace Kat with her. It never worked of course. I then changed schools when I was 10 to a school that I would stay at until I went to uni- a very pretty, tiny school in Chislehurst. Whilst, I was much happier, it was still tough. I was bullied terribly in my first two and half years there. I found a new group of friends, one in particular I was very close to. We haven't seen each other since school but when I first started my blog, she got in touch saying how sorry she was and how she was terrified that she would have issues as she was just about to get married and wanted to start a family. I feel terrible but I deleted her when I found out she was pregnant. I just couldn't take the sonograms and babygros. She's about to have her first daughter in the next week or two.

Anyway, back to Kat! So this other girl and I fell out in about Year 9 over some rumours. Year 10 started and at the beginning of every term there would be a pile of hymn books with new girls' names written on the front on post-its. In the other class (yes, my secondary was that small that it was two form entry!), on the wooden teacher desk at the front of the room, there was a small blue hymn book with her name written in capital letters. When she came in, we stood there looking at each other and said, "Are you, you?" and that was it. The rest is history. The terrible two were reunited for the majority of their teens, all of their twenties and the rest of their lives.

Yes, we've had some shit times. Overdoses, divorces, abuse, bad boyfriends, huge geographical distances, depression, eating disorders. We've come to the brink of our friendship falling to pieces with threatened divorces but we've always fought it back together again. In the past few years, we've managed to be not only in the same country but the same city which has made our friendship a lot easier! In the past six years, we've managed to become quite respectable in our old age- she a GP and I a teacher, both with mortgages, husbands and animals.

It wasn't until yesterday that I realised just how incredibly disconnected from the world I'd become since my 31st birthday. We were meant to go to the 5pm Hot Bikram Yoga at London Bridge but due to traffic, we ended up going for kaffee und kuchen over in Shad Thames and went to a later session. During our cakes, Kat looked me directly in the eye and asked if she'd pissed me off. It was then that I realised that I hadn't seen her since our HBY sessions at the beginning of November. I had become such a hermit (as I am wont to) that I hadn't really spoken to her or seen her since then. Strangely, our lives had also followed a parallel of falling to bits and picking up the pieces both through stress and workload during our absence from each other's lives.

Of course, she hadn't pissed me off. It has just been a mad few months of illness and sadness- none of which reflected upon her. She was worried that it was because she had been so wrapped up in her wedding where I was so ill- both miscarrying and getting over the allergic reaction. She was scared that I was alone and of course that isn't the case either. I've just been unable to form proper sentences through stress and illness. Stewing in my own misery until my fingers became all pruney.

I was so glad to see her yesterday. See the girl with whom all the shit just goes away. The girl who gets my weird and I get hers too. One of the upsides of my new job is that I need a travel card to get to it, not just a bus pass so it means I can get over to hers, stay there if it gets too late and not worry about forking out another £10 for a travelcard the next day. Kat was also worried about just turning up. My friend Alex did that to me in January- just turned up out of the blue which forced me into a situation of talking and interacting. It's a bit like I said yesterday in the list- you need definite offers and sometimes you might even need a, "I'm here, you don't need to talk- I'm cooking you dinner. Choose a DVD and pour the wine." That for hermits like me, is the best thing ever. Seriously. Just turn up, ignore the fact that the washing up may have stacked up and order a pizza.

Kat also noticed that with my absence in her life, I'd also not been writing as much and when I did it was always rotating around that same misery theme. I remember in a book that I read in French Women Writers of the Second Wave of Feminism (oh yes, I was that girl. I did those courses at uni!), there's was a Simone De Beauvoir collection of short stories- "The woman destroyed"- where she explored older women whose cause de vivre had been taken away- be it jobs/ husbands/ kids. In one of the stories, she repeats the words "J'en ai marre" 132 times which takes up roughly three sides of paper. The repetition showing just how utterly consumed she was by rage and how incapable she was of removing herself from that situation. Exactly where I was. For my Christmas/birthday present, I got  a beautiful embroidered notebook, stickers, a kaleidoscope (which Kat correctly mentioned is how I see the world anyway) and a book called "How are you feeling" by David Shearer. All to make me laugh and start writing more!

I will Kat. I'll also start seeing you more as I've been a bit crap but I'm back now.

I've missed you, girl.

So do I say sorry first?

I've spoken about triggers before- a trigger is something that unsettles you if you're feeling a bit wobbly. Those times that Paul quickly finds another channel without babies or adverts about families with their 2.4 children whilst I get red eyed and sniffly.

John Lewis is a big trigger for me. When I was starting to lose baby number 3, we went to pick up some bits I'd got for Christmas and to spend the last few vouchers of our wedding list. I was bleeding on and off and feeling like shit but I was definite that I needed to DO THIS RIGHT NOW. Yes, it was stupid. I should have rested at home but it was something structured to do. Christmas shopping before we ran off for our honeymoon in the US, it needed doing. Paul and I stopped for some lunch in the cafe there and there was the ugliest baby you could ever imagine sitting at the table next to us. She had that child snot that smells funny (if you're a teacher or a parent, you know exactly what smell I'm talking about) and was generally a bit meh. When I miscarry, the morning sickness becomes even more heightened so I was running to and from the loo every five minutes and all I could smell was this poor kid's snot. She was unwell, poor baby and probably shouldn't have been dragged around the shops by her parents but she became the target of my anger at losing another baby.

She was quite fixated on Paul and kept looking at him, grinning. That pissed me off even more. Why should she get to look at Paul when our baby doesn't? So he started chatting to her and I ran off to vomit and wail in the toilets.

As for the shopping trip, I bought all the wrong stuff too. Didn't check what things were before we bought them so we ended up with mismatching pillowcases and all different styles of pillows (I never knew there were so many styles!). We also have one funny knife and fork that don't match the rest. They're like constant reminders of that horrible day! They sit there in the airing cupboard and in the cutlery drawer saying, "You silly cow. You should have just left it until after you came back from America."

I still hate John Lewis but I'm determined to beat my hatred. I was there yesterday with my mum whilst we were picking up my Easter present (a tailor's dummy). I swerved and grimaced at the yummy mummies with their huge LOOK AT MY FUCKING BABY prams and I had tunnel vision through the baby section that you have to walk through to get to the cafe. The knitting pattern book that my mum had pointed out when I was pregnant with baby number 4 was still there. The Silver Cross pram that she said she'd get us was there. Sadly, the babies that those pregnancies were meant to have those clothes and pram aren't here.

A lot of people have been distressed by other people's reactions to their pregnancy losses, so how should you react? A pregnancy loss is a normal occurrence. Obviously- some people never lose a pregnancy and then there are people like me keeping up the averages! Nevertheless, it's a regular thing that happens to a lot of people and this is my ten things that I needed people to do and know when I lost my five. (This is in no specific order.)

1)  Acknowledge the baby that was lost: You might not have cooed over the expanding bump, liked the grainy sonogram or run out to buy cute baby socks but there was the potential of life there and from the moment I saw the two lines on the pregnancy test, I wasn't just experiencing cell division, I was expecting a baby. 

2) Let them cry: No, I really didn't need to cheer up. I needed to grieve. A  loss is a loss whether you have countless memories or just a fleeting moment. There's a lot of blaming yourself and your body when you lose a baby- it has let you down in the worst way possible and you need to scream, shout, tear at your hair and be angry. Love cannot only be measured by time but also by lost hopes, expectations and dreams

3) Don't expect an instant reaction: It takes time for things to sink in. For a long time I talked about the pregnancies as embryos/ foetuses. It's taken a long time to link those things with babies.

4) Be sensitive: Complaining about your kids makes me want to roundhouse kick you in the face. Seriously. I have hidden a lot of people's Facebook feeds or even deleted people because I can't take their moaning about sleepless nights, feeling like a cow or kids vomiting on them. Another sore point are endless bump pics and complaints about pregnancy- I might be saying it but believe me, I'm not the only one who thinks it about your posts, pregnancy loss or not. 

Sensitivity also goes for what you say. I know you want to tell me in a sort of Hunger Games kind of way that "The Odds Are Ever In Your Favour", but right after a loss I'm Rue. The little dead girl covered in flowers. Don't tell me it'll be ok because right then, it isn't and it's ok that it's not ok! Offering your kids is not ok either. Ever. Neither is mentioning adoption. Did you do it? No? Well then. I know it's an option but I want to have a go at having a baby that is genetically Paul's and my own right now. Believe me, working in Woolwich as a teacher is knowledge enough of what a decent home can do for a child but I want to have a go at having my own.

5) Don't forget Dad too: He is very lost as to what's going on. He has an emotional mess for a partner who is bleeding heavily and still has symptoms of pregnancy like sore boobs or vomiting even though they've lost the baby. He's also lost a baby too- he had a part in creating it and there are moments when this hits them. Like when co-workers ask about the due date of the baby that was lost a few months before or even those kindly folk that ask when there's going to be kids as you make, "such a lovely couple"! Don't forget about them, they're doing the daily mopping of tears, walking the dog and trying to keep things going whilst other bits fall apart.

6) Support: A kind look, a hug or an arm squeeze means a lot. There are words for people who lose their parents or partners but there is no word for someone who has lost their child. You don't need to say anything just a wink in your direction as your face starts to fall can mean the difference between glistening eyes or a full breakdown.

Specific help can really help too- don't say, "Call me, if you need anything"- offer instead to go for a walk, or a night out or a trip to a gallery.

7) Religion: As someone who is pretty irreligious, I still find comfort in hearing that you have spoken to angels or been praying for me. That to me says how much you love and care for me and means the world. Saying that it's god's will however may result in me punching you to a bloody pulp. It just shows ignorance and insensitivity- at least look at it scientifically- they would never have been a healthy baby with that genetic code. That gives me comfort without you bringing god into it.

8) Cards and things: Personally, I like things that remind me of happy memories. I have a jug I painted with my mates- I think it was for my thirtieth birthday- it is so lairy and bright with swirly paint, it's brilliant! I don't really want to have a house full of teddies telling me that I'm in someone's thoughts. For some people it's helpful, me, not so much. my keychain is full of things that my class have made or bought for me so much that I struggle to get my keys in the door. The one time I had one of those "Hallmark/Clintons" by the counter things bought for me was by a kid in my class who wanted an angel to look after me. That kid is now 15 and I still have it. I don't want things to remind me of my losses. I may at some point buy some plants to go in the garden as a memory of each baby but cards and things aren't my thing. If you must spend you money on me, I'll have a bottle of gin or red wine but really your money would be better put into a charity who might work towards other people not going through this.

9) Significant dates: Due dates are a bitch. They ooze sniping self criticism and the type of darkness that can only be achieved by having your eyes gouged out and then being buried fifty feet below the Earth's surface. Not only due dates though, the different trimesters, Christmas, Easter, birthdays and wedding anniversaries. They're all a bit shit because there's something you haven't achieved unlike the rest of mankind. Please understand if we become a little teary or grumpy on this day and the days around it.

10) Everyone is different: No list for how to look after someone after a pregnancy loss will ever match someone's needs. I've seen quite a few on the interwebs and most of them make me angry. This is just my idea of how I need to be looked after. Everyone's grief process is different. Some people bounce straight back, some people never move on. Everyone's triggers are different too. Loss is hard- think when you have lost someone who you were very close to. It doesn't take days, weeks, months to get "over it", once someone has been a part of your life, they always will. Life is fleeting-you just need to love well and work hard to get through it.

Over and out.

What you waiting for?

So I've had enough. I've have been a moany cunt on here for too long (yes, I said it. It's true though!). There's only so long before you have to pick yourself up by the britches, wash your face, shine your shoes and get on with life. 

This holiday, I'm going to get shit done. I've decided to get  the front bedroom sorted. It's South facing and at the moment is just one of the cat bedrooms (they have two currently, not including our bedroom). One of the bedrooms that is a maybe baby room but NOT ANYMORE! I've decided to turn it into a studio/work room for me. I've already sent emails to some people about free desks and chairs. I am not entirely sure how I will get them across London but most things are flat pack right? 

The voucher for Hobbycraft that I was given by work is going to replenish all my art supplies. New sketch pads, paints, pastels, inks, nibs and pencils. With the lovely sunshine from the field that is no longer obstructed by the epic trees outside, I will have a workspace of my own.

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

The stash from Hobbycraft (how I miss you Fred Aldous!) :

• Oil pastels;

• Watercolours;

• Brushes;

• Palette;

• Mixed media sketch book;

• Charcoal;

• Putty erasers;

• Sketching pencils;

• Black, yellow, scarlet and ultramarine inks;

• Nibs and handles.

Tomorrow, I will also fill in Paul's NHS number on the form and send back the letter to Time to Talk saying that I am willing to wait longer for the CBT they offered. Tomorrow, I will start to set up the space where I will write and draw. Having visited the Julia Donaldson exhibition yesterday, I came away feeling like her work was something not outside my own ability. It's time to start doing it and not just dreaming about it.

We will get our babies- PGD or not. 

I will write that book that P bought me this computer for.

What is this thing called love?

I spent a whole day with my brother and dad. It was hard. Within ten minutes, no probably less than that, I got the whole talk about how I will conceive naturally and he doesn't get why I would put Paul and myself through PGD. I don't personally understand why he wouldn't want anything else for his daughter when he has managed three children in fifteen pregnancies. Yes there were other issues for both my mum and step mum, as my mum has 6&12 as a balanced chromosome and my step mum wasn't too far away from never having a child due to age. I tried steering the conversation away from PGD and onto the fact that they will run tests to see if there is anything else causing the repeated pregnancy loss- the fact we don't know if there is anything wrong with P or whether my eggs are that of a 50 year old. he seemed to suck that up nicely and left me for a bit.

Then we went to Chatham Dockyard. There were innumerable amounts of yummy mummies and their babies oozing out of every pore. Massive Silver Cross buggies. All the Call the Midwife paraphernalia. All of which on CD1 was a slap around the face. CD1 is good, it means that my body is finally getting back on track after seven months of messing around. Not that it can ever be that easy. There were streaks yesterday, then nothing, then leg splitting pain. It's like each period is bitchslapping me again! I've never spotted. Never had that implantation bleed  that I know of so a bit of spotting makes you believe that maybe a healthy pregnancy is under way. IT'S A LIE. All part of the mind fuck. There's no baby.

It's not like I thought I was pregnant but there's always that hope. As I said before, I am now ovulating very regularly and now that the month has cut right down from 45 to 28, I'm right where I was a while ago. This is positive, even if it's a bit of a short phase ovulating on CD17- only an 11 day luteal phase which isn't great.

So with a pregnancy announcement on Facebook and a tough day, it has been hard. Had a bit of a melt down after I screwed up dinner tonight (didn't cook a steak as well as it should have been). Just felt like that failure friend of mine had been creeping up more than it should. After all, I keep failing as a wife, I keep failing as a daughter to provide a grandchild and I couldn't even cook dinner right.

Too many times, does P look over at me and find me crying because it's another failed month. I don't now know which is worse- whether it's worse not seeing two lines or seeing them both there. Either way, we don't seem to end up with a baby so screw them both I guess.

I started wondering what my life would be like without children the other day. Never felt like that before.

It's been a tough few days. I didn't have the best goodbye with one of my kids and it's already begun to haunt my dreams. In them, we make everything alright but I'm not sure how that could happen in real life. I always had a soft spot for him and fought his corner wherever possible. Despite the chaos of his home life, he's doing surprisingly ok but I just wanted him to know that what he's going through isn't normal so that he doesn't choose to go the same way as his parents. I said to him how proud of him I was that he managed to not only be such a lovely boy but that he also had such an amazing attitude to work as well that he wants to do well and with that attitude, he'll do just fine. He burst into tears, this made me cry. I mentioned to him that I had my spies around the place who would be looking out for him, making sure he's ok. He gave me a hug at this point but I did feel like perhaps I had been too frank. If I could have wrapped that boy up and taken him home, I would. In a heartbeat. Do you have kids? Have you ever been told by a teacher that they'd love to take them home. Yeah, mostly that's a lie because we can't think of anything nice to say about them. This one, I would.

I won't be having a baby in 2014.