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Due to the economic slowdown, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off!

The absolute worst part of the month is The Two Week Wait: That spell in limbo before you can pee on a stick and see if you’re going to be turning your life upside down in 9 months. It’s horrible because it’s nearly impossible to pretend it’s not happening, and when you admit that, how do you strike the right balance between hope and nonchalance? Clearly we want something to happen, but, a bit like one of those magic eye pictures, if you look too hard, you lose perspective.

I had quiet hope this month though, as I think did Keith. Sadly it wasn’t to be.

It’s really hard not to feel like a bit of a failure, and those glib statistics seem to mock you. Did you know that "Around 84% of couples actively trying for a baby conceive within one year"? Time’s running out for us to be in that group so what happens next? Do we carry on? Do we give it up as a bad job? When do we start talking about alternatives? Or don’t we? Do we live in total denial until the day I start getting hot flushes and a desire for elasticated waistbands?

I envy those people who "accidentally" find themselves pregnant – in some situations in life ignorance truly is bliss.

One thing I happened upon this month which really helped me is the idea of visualisation. This whole process has tested my beliefs in every way possible and I have struggled to hold on to faith of any kind, but I seem to have found something in the idea of visualising myself nurturing a healthy happy baby. It’s not a visualisation that comes easily to me, I don’t suppose it does to someone without children, but bizarrely, it seems to have a power and a reality like nothing else I have tried. With it, I can keep hold of the last few straws of my faith, and slowly, very slowly, claw back my belief that this will happen for us.
Thursday, 11 September 2008 Comments: 0
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TTC Involves a LOT of Drugs!

I went to see a lovely consultant last month to try and move things along on the maybe front.

Looking at my test results he suggested that I take Clomid for a few months. I’m pretty new to all this, like most women I spent the last decade trying not to get pregnant assuming when I wanted to, it would happen on demand, so Clomid wasn’t really something I had heard of before now. For the uninitiated, Clomid ‘forces’ ovulation, which is useful for consultants because it means they can know with some degree of certainty when you’re going to pop an egg and book any scans they want to do.

Unfortunately my BUPA ran out of budget, so instead of the planned scan, I was reduced to buying one of those ovulation kits and peeing on a stick for 7 days instead. Not nearly as sophisticated, but a dead heat on the “things you’d rather avoid” scale. It turns out that I’m ovulating just fine though, which is great because it’s one less question mark.

The only other thing to consider is the fact that Clomid leads to an increased instance of twins. I’m not sure if I’m ready for two mini Keiths running about the place!
Tuesday, 2 September 2008 Comments: 0
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Welcome

This is the diary of our journey to have a Maybe – as in Maybe Baby, geddit? .. sigh, sorry the jokes will get better, I promise.

I haven’t published this blog until now because in some ways it's as much about helping me as informing anyone else.

At the end of last year, Keith and I decided that while we wouldn’t try for a baby, we certainly wouldn’t do anything to stop a child coming our way. Things didn’t really seem to happen though, and I was starting to wonder if there wasn’t more to the story than just bad timing.

20 vials of blood later and I had an answer.

I tested positive for the MTHFR C677T heterozygous gene mutation.

Simply put, this gene is responsible for absorbing folate, and symptoms of this particular gene mutation include recurrent miscarriage due, it would seem, to the formation of tiny blood clots in places you wouldn’t want them ... like the umbilical cord.

Since making this discovery I have added “baby” aspirin to my daily dose of folic acid and life goes on as it was before, waiting to see if the stars align and the Gods smile.

Hopefully, this blog will soon chart the progress of a carefully managed pregnancy. As well as helping me stay sane, I hope this blog might help other women faced with unwelcome news they cannot change.
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