I shed tears of joy.

What an interesting few days I have had.
First of all a friend has asked me to be present at the birth of her second child. She really wants her first child to be a part of the birth and because I have a great relationship with both mum and the little one then she would feel comfortable if I was present to care for the child, play with her and try to keep things normal for her. My friend really wants her husband to be focused on the birth of the child rather than being too caught up with seeing to the little one.
I am totally blown away by this! I can't believe it!!
As I don't have any sisters and as I don't seem to be managing pregnancy myself I have been starting to (privately) wonder if I will ever be witness to a birth.
Of course I said "yes" straight away!!!
The next interesting thing is that I went to a wedding on the weekend and at the wedding were heaps of people I knew. My best friend D, my SIL and BIL and almost all of our gang, the people we hang out with. The gang comprises of people who have known each other for a very long time but are not particularly close. Within the gang are sub-sections of people who spend more time together, but we all get together for major events, camping trips and stuff. Although everyone in the gang knows that Action Man and I are doing IVF, not many people ask us about it, (of course this doesn't include those in our subsection, as we are closer).
I have had mixed feelings about not being asked about our progress.
At times I suppose it has been good because I have not been required to share all the sadness in my heart.
But mostly I feel isolated from the girls. Here they are talking about their pregnancies, births, babies etc, and I have nothing to add. I don't speak of my IVF progress (or lack of) because I am not asked and I don't share my feelings because I have not been asked.
I am not saying they should ask me because I'm sure they are only being polite and would definitely not want to upset me in public. They also may not know how comfortable I would be talking about this and I don't know how comfortable they would be with me heaping it onto them. But at the same time I have always felt restricted, after all IVF anf IF are a major major part of my life. I face it every day, I live with it and I usually cope with it. As much as I cope with it I face an ever present sadness that these friends could not possibly understand. I do think that to know me is to know the things I am going through.
Yet I battle on with these social gatherings because it is not my place to force understanding on to people.
Well...At the wedding two of the girls, at different times, asked me how I was going with it, they told me they think about us all the time and asked me the ins and outs of IVF. I can't tell you what a relief it was to discuss it openly. To put it out there. I felt a sense of belonging and I felt like I had understanding.
To make this story even more amazing I will add that one of these girls told me that her and her husband had been doing lots of thinking and discussing about our situation and they would be happy to act as a surrogate for us if the time came.
My goodness that came as a shock. Action man and I have not considered this option before and to be honest it seems a very complicated path to tread. However we were delighted with their kind offer.
So these things, amogst a few other fairly deep conversations that night, left me feeling quite emotional...The champagne I was drinking much later may also have added to my highly emotional state!
The emotion didn't end on Sunday as B ended up back in hospital with more bleeding and yucky stuff but amazingly she is STILL pregnant! Phew.

....am very happy for my friends...

Jeepers, is there anyone else out there who has been infertile long enough to notice that all their friends and acquaintance's pregnancies occur at similar times, in sets, or spates, like some kind of virus or infection?
An old and good friend just rang me to tell me of her pregnancy and also of her SIL's pregnancy (I know her too). That means if I add up all the people who are or were (due to miscarriage) pregnant, amongst people I know, and who are/were due between October and December the number is...6!!! What was going on in January, Feb and March and WHY didn't I catch that disease????
that's not to mention the 3 I know who are dropping in June.
This happened before a year or so ago when I had 3 friends due days apart in January and another 3 due weeks apart in September last year.
Maybe it's something about the moon?
Aaaahhhhh. Musn't complain or begrudge.
Must repeat...am very happy for my friends, am very happy for my friends...am very...

Happy Easter

Urg, it was touch and go yesterday.
B and her husband went interstate for a wedding and no sooner had they left, it seemed , D had phone calls and stressed messages from B's husband that she was in hospital bleeding. And of couse B was ringing me at each update while I was car shopping. Horrid stuff for them. Anyway the good news is there is a bit of a clot present but the little one's heart is still ticking away. B is being very calm and cool about it (unlike her husband) and last I spoke to her she was leaving the hospital and WALKING to her hotel!! I found out that it was just next door after extensive berating from moi. All seems to have calmed down for today so lets hope it's just a scare.
I'm on the mend but still have a bit of tummy pain from the holes in by abdomen. I feel a little bit like a watering can. When I was in the hospital I had some blood taken for a pregnancy test (I insisted on this for peace of mind since we lost our one and only pregnancy during surgery-unknown pregnancy of course). Anyways the little old lady who was the nurse who took my blood hit a tendon in my arm which twigged some nerves in my thumb. Since then I have had pins and needles and pain when my thumb does certain chores. Mmmm attempting to get pregnant is getting more and more treacherous.

Action Man and I have been busy looking for a new car. Our Pajero blew up the other day. Fixible we think but as I have a reasonable amount of traveling to do for work and because petrol has gone up again and is continuing to rise we have decided to get a little car. I have fallen madly in love with a Peugeot much to A.M's alarm (it's an Australian made car or no car!!). There is much arm bending going on! I am using my womanly ways....

week long post

It's a crisp sunny Tasmanian morning.
I have sore shoulders from my three visits to the gym this week! I am certainly reawakening muscles I forgot I had and gee it feels good. I'm going bushwalking tomorrow and I'm a bit concerned about carrying my day pack up the mountain and back! It feels good to be doing active things with my body again. I only hope I can sustain it after my laparoscopy (on Thursday) and when I get back into IVF cycles again. It's probably stupid but I always have this feeling that by minimizing my exercise I might increase the chance of an embryo attatching. It's probably the opposite but I know it will be a big change of mindset for me.

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Oh dear it's taken me a few days to finish this post so I might as well update it.

The bush walk was great. We climbed Mt.Pilinger. It was a clear, sunny day and the mountain was covered in snow. The view was absolutely spectacular and the climbing a bit perilous at times. I certainly felt those above mentioned muscles at the end!

My Laporoscopy is tomorrow and I am feeling very nervous about it. I just don't want to cope with anymore difficult or bad news and I'm so I'm dreading it. I am trying very hard to think of the positive side. That is, maybe I will know what is stopping IVF working for us and maybe it can be fixed.

Thinking about it has rendered me an insomniac lately and so last night, feeling very weary and emotional I had a bit of a sook about it with Action Man. I had just mopped up the last of the tears when the phone rang and it was my very good friend B who had rung to tell me she is pregnant.

The timing was not right at all but I held all sad thoughts within and said all the right things to her. When I got off the phone the flood gates opened and I couldn't stop them. Don't get me wrong I don't begrudge B her pregnancy, I have no place to do that and resenting her for it will not get me anywhere. I just get so frustrated with the ease at which other people's lives seem to go in procreation. It seems that all of my friends make these neat decisions about their lives (like I want to) such as travel, buy a house, get married and then try for a baby straight after. It only took B 2 months to achieve her dream. That is much the same for most people I am friends with. It's bloody frustating (for me not them!). I suppose happy news like that brings on the "why mes".

I can imagine telling me was a difficult thing for B to do. We had talked about it a fair bit before and I fully expected her to get pregnant quickly. B also has to tell her friend who I wrote about 2 or 3 posts ago. She has just lost her baby I think this will be a very hard conversation.

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Well I still haven't posted this entry and here I am on my recovery day from the lap. It went really well. My tubes are good and so is the inside of my uterus. The outside of the ute was covered in a bit of Endo which was removed. There was also an adhesion causing my ute to be attatched to something else and that was removed too. Dr.B Isn't sure if the endo was causing infertility and to tell you the truth I think he might be baffled as to why I am not achieving pregnancy. So I guess I fall back into the unexplained infertility box. Having faced the possibility of loosing my tubes I feel much more relaxed with unexplained infertility as of course my options are not so extreme. There might still be hope of a natural pregnancy one day.

The anesthetic was a bit of a killer. I woke feeling sick, sweaty, dizzy and teary. Dr.B Came to see me twice but I was in a bit of a state each time so I'm fairly embarrassed about that. We drove home from Hobart (2 and a half hours) with me sleeping on the back seat. Poor Action man. It was a long and boring day for him. It must suck to see your wife in pain.

Anyway, I feel o.k today. Sore but in good spirits. D and B are coming over today to entertain me as A.M is at work. Someone left me flowers at my back door and I've talked to my mum on the phone. I have a new book to start today - Watermelon by Marian Keyes and a whole pile of trashy magazines from my MIL.

I am left wondering what is next though. For those of you who know me from Betty's Blues you would know about the laps and surgery for grapefruit sized fibroids. Now endo? Lets hope it's a positive thing growing down there next!

Dr.B said I am to ring the clinic and get back on with IVF next week. No mucking around eh?

The perils of teaching

I have been a teacher for about 11 years now and I pretty much thought I had seen everything. That was until yesterday....I was leading my Kinder/Preps out of our hall where we had watched a performance (the hall had been very hot). One of my boys came up to me with a look of alarm and a handful of spew, spew dripping down his face.
Yucky but not an uncommon sight for a teacher of littlies.
Then someone said "oh Annie has spew on her back". When I looked there was not one but two girls who were covered in spew from their hair right down their backs. Talk about a projectile vomit. Much coffuffle followed as the bell had just gone, our classroom was full of parents, the little girls were sobbing and I had 28 children tangled in the confusion. Luckily someone's kind granny went into spew cleaning overdrive so I could deal with seeing children safely out the door.
What a whirlwind!

On other news I joined a gym today...First time in a long time. It's a Curves gym which you have probably heard about since there are over 9000 branches world wide. I feel kind of impressed with myself. My figure has been suffering from all of this IVF treatment and I've probably used it as a bit of an excuse not to exercise. I really think I need to loose some weight ( 5 kg and 21 cm of fat I have found out today from my figure analysis) so watch this space. Here goes!!!

Life can be a Bitch

The friend of my friend who finally achieved a pregnancy (see about three posts previous) lost her baby yesterday at 10 weeks. I can imagine how devastated her and her husband are at the moment. What a long and troubled road they have been on. This long awaited glimmer of hope has been taken from them just like that. Bloody hell life can be so unfair.