An IVF story

2009

On New Year's Day 2008, I despaired that I would ever have a baby. The thought of a whole year stretching ahead with no prospect of becoming a parent was unbearable. Today, in just 10 weeks' time, my baby should, God willing, be born.

There's been lots of love and laughter this holiday period. On Christmas Day, we were sitting around the festive table with my family, gently digesting the mountain of food we'd just eaten. We were taking it in turns to remember children's nursery rhymes - Little Jack Horner, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Tom Tom the Piper's Son. I am not sure how international these are, so I'll let you know the words that my husband intended to sing:

Ding dong bell

Pussy's in the well

Who put him in?

Little Johnny Green...

However, instead of the word "pussy" at the top of his voice he sang out afamily word for a woman's private parts, known but usually unspoken by everyone at the table. He turned as red as a cranberry.

I don't have any New Year's Resolutions. I can't resolve to be a good mother - I'll just be the best mother I can be. I am still hoping that I get the chance to try. 

Happy New Year everybody.   

Pregnancy symptoms - update

Section One - The really obvious symptoms

1. The big balloon up my jumper. My family say I have a very nice baby bump, but I think I look like I have swallowed a giant Easter egg. I am not sure whether they're being kind to me (and anyway, what would a bad baby bump look like?), or whether they think it looks strangely high and pointy too. I look very much like someone who has shoved a football up her dress as a last minute fancy dress costume.

2. The gigantic bosoms. They just won't stop growing. I am now a 32G, and still bustin' out all over. This sounds bad enough in English bra sizing, but I looked at the label in my new bra this morning, and apparently in US sizing I am not a 32I. Which, frankly, is terrifying.

Section Two - The TMI symptoms

1. Someone else's areolae. I used to have soft pink English rose type areolae, their colour reminiscent of the inside of a sea shell. But now I appear to have swapped areole with someone of an entirely different ethnicity. I have ultra white glow-in-the-dark skin. My new areolae are dark cocoa brown. They look very odd - sort of like I've secretly been colouring them in. My husband read in his "Blokes' 100 Top Tips for Surviving Pregnancy" book that they don't change back. Ever.

2. Bad body art. Someone has drawn a slightly wobbly line down the centre of my belly with a coffee coloured felt tip pen.

3. Eccentric hair growth.  As someone with wispy, poker straight hair, I was rather looking forward to the bountiful second trimester locks promised in "Your Pregnancy Week by Week." Hopefully it means I won't go bald afterwards, but Rapunzel I currently am not. Unless you count underarm hair. That seems to be experiencing a renaissance. Leg hair, however, has almost stopped growing altogether.

Section Three - Miscellaneous information

1. I can't see my own privates anymore.

2. I can still see my own feet, but painting my toe nails requires considerable upper body contortion.

3. I have rib ache. Just like someone is pushing them out from the inside. Surprise!

4. I can't wait for my husband to get home from work. You can fill in the gaps.

5. No cravings, no ravenous hunger, no mood swings, no stretch marks, no back ache. But watch this space for possible appearances of all the above. I've dipped into the final chapters about the third trimester in the fount of all knowledge aka "Your Pregnancy Week by Week" and it sounds like an absolute nightmare. The author of said book reckons that knowledge is power, but I think I might go with blissful ignorance instead and hope I just don't get the piles, massive weight gain, sleepless nights, varicose veins, breathing difficulties, high blood pressure, diabetes and so on and so forth.

So that's me at 25 weeks and three days. I'd post photos, but my husband insists on doing them all naked, so they're under lock and key.

We're on speaking terms with the in-laws again, but I am not going to easily forget being told I am going to damage my baby. Nor am I going to forget all the hurtful things that were said between my husband and his mother. I feel extremely guarded, and think it's going to be best to stay that way.

I've been so angry and upset, I haven't been able to write here. Now I feel that I can. And I am very, very glad about that.

Furious

The 20 week scan was beautiful. Everything is normal. I am very relieved.

Since then, things have gone dramatically down hill.There's been a big fall out between my husband and his family, and I feel very shaky. I previously wrote about this on the blog, but have decided to delete the entry. If anyone I know were to come across it, I think their feelings would be hurt. I accidentally discovered the infertility blog of someone I know, and read some things I don't think she'd want me to know, so I know it's possible.

I wanted to password protect the entry, but I couldn't work out how to protect a single entry rather than the whole blog. If anyone knows how to do this using Typepad, please let me know, and then I can really say what's going on.

Protection

I love walking. One of my favourite walks takes me down to the river, across the bridge with the weir rushing beneath it, and then over two large open areas of parkland before reaching town. I live in a University town, and there are always lots of interesting people to watch - academics on bicycles, children feeding ducks, awkwardd groups of new students trying desperately to look popular and make friends.

Wearing pregnancy goggles, this walk now feels very different. I want a lapel badge or a sandwich board saying 'PREGNANT NOT FAT - CAUTION ADVISED' or, better still, a leather belt to wear outside my coat with three foot long sharp spikes pretruding from it, stopping anyone from coming to close to me. I worry about the bikes running me down. I worry that the groups of boys hanging around outside the public lavatories have malicious intent. I worry that I'll get distracted by the duck-feeding children, somehow slip on the bridge, slide between the railings and plunge into the weir below.

I worry because I care about this life inside of me more than I care about anything else.

Growth

I am feeling so happy, I can barely contain it. I catch a glimpse of myself in shop windows, and notice I am smiling. I wake in the morning, and remember dreaming of planting a garden or sewing a baby's christening robe. Every day I end up crying with laughter.

This is real. It's happening to me. I am 17 and a half weeks pregnant, and I think I will have a baby in the spring.

My body is changing. On Thursday I went shopping for maternity clothes with my lovely Mum, and felt I needed to explain to the shop assistants that I really was pregnant and not just a bit overweight and imagining it, as apart from my gargantuan bosoms, my body looked so normal. Then on Friday morning, the bump suddenly appeared. Now everyone notices it.

I love this hard mound, and the life within it. I love the feeling of my husband holding us both in his arms. I am crying as I type this.

However, I do not like pregnancy yoga. I went to the first class last night. The other 19 women looked normal enough - no tie dye Dippy Hippies or leather trousered Yummy Mummies. But they didn't crack up with laughter when the teacher told us we were seeds, safe and warm in the ground, and that we should stretch our branches to the sky.

I may not be a seed but I am growing, and in so many ways.

In limbo

So I've made it to 15 weeks and two days. All is going well. I get pelvis ache after sitting at work all day, but there's a lot going on down there so it's hardly surprising. I almost have a baby bump, which I have mixed feelings about. Part of me wants something to show off, but another biggish part still wants to keep this under wraps. I still really can't believe this is happening. Completely irrationally I somehow believe that if I keep it all secret, there's a better chance of averting tragedy and making it to 40 weeks and a live baby. 

I've been finding it really hard to keep up with this blog. It's not that I am short of time, or tired, or anything like that. Every time I sit down to write,  admitting my feelings about this pregnancy or telling you about all the changes that are happening feels incredibly reckless and dangerous.

But I'll try to be brave today, as a few of you have written to check that I am okay, and I really appreciate that. Thank you for thinking of me.

Today I had my annual review at work with the Big Bosses. The Big Bosses are very happy with my performance. The Big Bosses gave me an above inflation pay rise, and said lots of lovely things. I also told them I was pregnant. Legally, I don't have to tell them for a couple of months yet, but as I work for a small company and they'll need to cover my absence by reorganizing the existing team it's only fair to give them as much notice as possible. As we were talking about the various options for covering my maternity leave, I wanted to stop the whole discussion. It all sounded too definite and Fate-tempting. I felt like the plans we were making were for someone else, who'll be going on maternity leave at the end February and may or may not be back after a year. Yes, a year. The NHS infertility provision might be pathetic, but compared to the US our maternity rights are pretty fantastic - like, we have some.

Very soon I'll be looking definitely pregnant and no amount of layering and floaty skirt wearing will hide it, so I've decided also to tell my work colleagues about Petus the Fetus at the end of this week. I am not looking forward to that either. They don't know about all the IVF trauma and misery, and although I still don't want them to know, I am worried about how I'll receive their congratulations. I am still not ready for hugs and bunches of flowers and any glib comments.

Sorry, I know I've been going on about this for ages now. My fear and ambivalence may still be the headline news, but there is another story. Part of me is getting used to this idea. It's growing quietly and softly this happiness inside of me. Every morning, when we're still in bed, my husband and I feel my tummy for increasing size and hardness. It's undeniably changing. Every couple of weeks we're now taking photos. This also feels incredibly risky, but I want to record every precious moment, even if it ends in tears. Sometimes, when I sit down to blog and end up deleting what I've written, I think about posting some of the pictures. I know anyone desperately longing for a baby will probably find any belly shots nauseating/ infuriating/ exasperating, but I find the fact this is happening to my body (my body, with its multitude of crappy infertility issues) astonishing.

There's so much I want to ask you about pregnancy and telling other people and coping with their reactions and buying maternity clothes and equipment for a baby and a million other things. I just need to get my act together enough not to delete this post, and then maybe the next time I'll try some of my questions out on you. Maybe.

The shape of a mother

I have a new obsession. Before IVF, I used to manically google 'getting pregnant tips', 'nutrition for fertility' and 'how long should I wait before worrying about infertility'. During IVF, I used to manically google 'number of follicles', 'number of eggs' and 'early pregnancy symptoms'. When I first found out about the very small bun currently in my oven I went into manic googling overdrive, and tried out everything from 'food poisoning during pregnancy' and 'camel riding during pregnancy' to 'risk of miscarriage' and 'lack of pregnancy symptoms'.

But now I have found something new to google. Yesterday, I found that thousands of women are posting pictures of their baby bumps online. I don't know why I keep looking at them. I am 11 weeks today, and don't think I have any bump to speak of. Sometimes I think I might, but it could just be lunch, or constipation. My biggest fear is that I am never going to get one, and that things will go tits up before then. (My next biggest fear is that I will get a bump, it will become a real live baby, and I still won't have connected to the idea of being a mother).

This new googling obsession is masochistic in so many ways. I have spent the last few years deliberately avoiding the sight of anyone looking remotely pregnant, and now I keep going back to this strange corner of the web whenever my colleague goes out of the room. I am definitely sick.

It seems very wrong indeed to be worrying about my changing body shape at the same time as being terrified of having a miscarriage and stressing about being a bad mother, but this is a blog and I don't have to be coherent and rational like in the real world, so I am telling it like it is.

If you're feeling brave/ just as masochistic as me you can take a look at what I am talking about here.

Observations - (1) Most of the women posting photos seem to be a US size 6 or under, be 25 or under, and to be completely free of stretchmarks or other blemishes. Several look like models. (2) If you're really thin your bump definitely shows sooner. Or maybe it's just food - how can they tell the difference? (3) The thin posters seem to stop posting around 20 weeks. What happens to them then?

Throughout our childhoods my mother regaled my sister and me with stories about how difficult pregnancy and childbirth are, how are bodies will never be the same, how hard it is to cope with a crying baby, how your life changes forever etc etc etc. She says we wrecked her body - she genuinely has the worst stretchmarks I have ever seen. It's not surprising that I used to say I didn't want kids. Her contraception campaign was very effective (although in my case, as it turned out, unnecessary). 

The photos in 'Your Pregnancy Week by Week' (current bedtime reading) of a pregnant woman's changing body therefore came as something as a shock. The model looks like a model but with gradually bigger beach balls somehow getting sewn inside her skin. Ditto any pregnant celebrity who reveals all. Ditto the women on the site I was just talking about. Where are the varicose veins? Where are the blue veined monster boobs? Where are the really nasty inch wide and deep stretchmarks?

I feel like there's a conspiracy going on - it's all super curvy pregnant loveliness and silence about what happens next. I already have loads of stretchmarks, just from getting tall quickly when I was younger. I know that if this pregnancy continues it's only a matter of time before I get some more. My husband tells me (and I believe him) that he will love me however my body turns out, but I am not so sure that I can love me. I know that if we get to have a baby it won't care what shape I am, which right now just seems to confirm to me my profound selfishness and unsuitability for motherhood.

So the very graphic website I found when my colleague went to buy his lunch came as a huge, huge relief. Want to know what happens when those nice pert boobies deflate, and go south along with everything else? Then this is the site for you. These women have saggy boobs, they have stretchmarks in abundance, they have flabby skin. 

I somehow need to imagine the shape that I might be as a mother, in order to imagine what kind of mother I'll be.  This site helps me. Thank you thank you to all these women for their honesty.

Hold the champagne

When people ask "So do you want a girl or a boy", couples typically say something like "We don't mind as long as it's healthy." No one has asked us this yet, so we haven't had to rehearse our own response. Of course everyone wants the best start in life for their child, but the standard 'as long as it's healthy' answer seems to imply that an unhealthy or disabled baby would somehow be unacceptable. My husband and I have been grappling with this recently. Even though this little thing is only 10 weeks old and a few centimetres long, it's already being tested for abnormalities. Basic testing is available free on the NHS, but we've opted for more extensive testing for an extra fee.  Last night we went to the hopsital for the first of three stages of testing.

I am not sure why we're doing this. Do we just want to be prepared in case some signficant problem is found? Would we want to abort if it was, and give up what feels like our only chance to be parents? Would we love a less than perfect baby less? Neither of us know the answer. It's just something we want to do.

What upsets me is that undergoing the testing last night reinforced my disconnection with this pregnancy. This is really starting to worry me. The student nurse referred to 'it' as a 'baby', and I wanted to explode with anger. To me, a baby is a social being, something that has an existence in the world or at least the chance of an existence. I can only think of this as a fetus - something in the process of becoming. After she was married at just 19, my mother tried unsuccessfully to conceive for two years, but when she finally found out she was pregnant, she says that her fear and anxiety just melted away overnight. Thirty-three years distance from that experience may be distorting her memory, but I feel like the positive test has only brought on a huge new set of worries.

We've only told our parents about the pregnancy so far, but rather than being excited I am dreading other people knowing about it. We've agreed that we'll tell people around 14 weeks, after the testing is complete and when (theoretically) the pregnancy is at less risk. But even then I am not sure I'll be able to cope with people sending their congratulations and popping the champagne corks. Even when my parents-in-law sent some flowers recently I hid them until my husband came home from his trip, when I reluctantly put them out.

I know I am protecting myself, but I am worried I'm never going to become a glowing happy pregnant woman. Maybe this is a fallacy, but I never realised that pregnancy after infertility would be so hard. My 'Your Pregnancy Week by Week' book has nothing to say on the matter - it's like once you're pregnant after struggling to conceive - bingo! - you're cured. There was a glowing happy pregnant woman at the wedding we went to at the weekend. She was ripe and ready to pop. Over and over again all I could think was "I don't think I am ever going to feel like you."

When am I going to snap out of this?

Two big pregnancy symptoms

Okay, I admit it, I do have pregnancy symptoms.

Yesterday after work I decided to go for a bra fitting. I used to be a 32D - now it seems that I am a 32FF. This leave me wondering if when my (young male) colleague told me that I was looking 'fuller in the face', he was actually referring to some other part of my body entirely.

I am going to a wedding at the weekend. I think I had best see if I actually still fit into any of the dresses I was planning to wear without looking like a hooker.

Breasts, if you're reading this, please stop now. You've made your point.

Fat face

My work colleague just told me that I look 'fuller in the face' or 'slightly more rounded in the chin area' since my holiday.  He doesn't know I am pregnant. My sister, who does know, told me the same thing at the weekend.

Pregnancy fat face is definitely not mentioned in my 'Your Pregnancy Week by Week'  book. I suppose I am sort of happy to have a visible pregnancy symptom, but OH MY GOD please don't let this turn me into a huge pink marshmallow.

I also have a haemorrhoid.

That's all I have to say on the matter.