The blog in which I stand under a raining cartoon cloud

Lately I've been getting a little blue again.

I thought I was okay and past it but I guess you can't reason with grief.

I don't think anything in particular set it off, even though the last week or two, well, life seems to be throwing babies at me. Babies I can't have right now.

Overhearing co-workers laugh about some dope getting knocked up. My friend telling me about her other friend announcing her pregnancy. Attending a baby shower for someone I don't even know well. Going out with my sister and her kid.. and the kid finds my shirt more interesting than me. People giving me huge donation bags of baby stuff for me to help them sort and telling me I can take things if I want. Like.. why? I could take all the bags and it wouldn't do me any good right now (although I did keep a pair of dog themed kid's shoes with floppy dogs ears on them because who could get rid of those??)

If these fit me I would friggin' wear them EVERYWHERE

Recently my husband went out to a sporting event with his close friend Jambo, who has also been through the IVF rigmarole but they did get a son out of it. He ended up talking about the miscarriage to him. They were previously unaware of it because we weren't ready to talk. Hubby didn't get a chance to tell me he'd done this as he got back late but the next night I got a similarly late text from Jambo's wife Messi. She said she'd heard about what happened and was there for me if I needed it.

I was initially angry - I didn't want to tell people for exactly this reason. The pity, the sorrow. The huge, aborted elephant in the room covered in blood, stinking of lost dreams and taking up space, like the onesies I'll never be able to put on that child.

So I didn't reply. I felt bad about it but I didn't know what to say. The rational part of me knows that Messi went through a similar thing and we could talk about it. Hell, she has talked to me about it but it was months after the fact and before I could fully comprehend how she must have felt. Even then - after the birth of her current child - she had tears in her eyes and was emotional about it.

Now, my emotional side knows that I would be the same but worse. I would be a mess and wouldn't even be able to choke out the words I want to say. I have always struggled to convey my personal life to others. I especially struggle if I need to say something of importance - I am for the most part, an emotionless stone person with the empathy level of a sociopath but I turn into the biggest sook ever when it's my turn to emote.

Soul Refresher

Last weekend I went to church for the first time in a while.

I wouldn't describe myself as overly religious, but I do try to go every now and then. As I do shift work, that usually makes it harder. I used to go every week as a child, with my family.
It was kind of nice to have a routine like that, a chance to sing, see my grandparents and get out of the house. Sometimes we'd go out for dinner/lunch after.

I still remember someone saying to me after I left school that 'I didn't have to go to church anymore.' and I was like.. if I don't want to go, I won't go. If I do want to go, try and stop me.


That and the kids complaining about religious classes and having to attend mass in school... bro, you enrolled in a Catholic school..what did you expect?
Also, I have little patience for people who get their newborns baptised purely for the photo opportunity and for no other reason.

The church in my local used to be pretty run down and homely but they've spruced it up a little with new seats and a fresh lick of paint. Sometimes if we were travelling, we'd pop in to a different church or occasionally a cathedral. I always felt out of place in the expensive looking ones, preferring the local one.

I was shocked at how few people there were at our session, compared with when I was a kid. It was early in the morning though, so that could be why.

Now, while I have faith and try to be a good Roman Catholic - I also employ common sense.

I'm not going to take a passage from any of the books word for word or extremely literally because I don't think a vast majority of them are super relevant anymore. Bearing in mind that this is a book that's been taken from word of mouth, sometimes several times and then written down and then translated all over the world. Many, many years ago.

What I try to do is take the important bits - for example the ten commandments or any good moral - and live by them or by example of people I look up to, like the kind priests and nuns I grew up with at school and in the parish or family members.

The reason I'm talking about religion is because of all the talk and comforting/confronting posts you see following a miscarriage.

Namely: 'God had a plan for the newborn' or 'if God exists, why does miscarriage exist?'

Coping (or not so much) after the loss

I had been given Monday following the surgery off. The next day, Panda had to return to work and I was meant to. I did not. I had not been able to sleep the night before, I was still in agony with my legs but more than that - I couldn't face the idea of going into the workplace. Besides that I just couldn't stop crying.

I had a panic attack of sorts - stressed that I would break down in tears if someone asked how I was or even breaking down for no reason at all. I was petrified that - not being in the right state of mind - I might say something inappropriate to a customer that could affect my job, especially if a customer got aggressive or angry about something that in the end.. doesn't matter.

I managed to call work to let them know I wouldn't be in - hoping I wouldn't get any of the bitchy ones. Hoping worked - I got the 'mother hen' of the work leaders. She'd dealt with me before when i had an adverse reaction at work to some fertility medication, although she didn't know or pry for the root cause.

Managing to drag myself to the doctor's for a medical certificate was an experience. The opposing wall to where the waiting room is has an opaque tint to try to block out the intense sun. It doesn't really work, so no one gave me side eye when I was sitting there with sunnies on.

As usual, I couldn't see my usual doctor because you have to pre-plan and book your sickness weeks in advance apparently which is a bit messed up to me. So I went to see a doctor I hadn't used before but Panda had. He'd told me this doctor was good and actually listened to him. The last doctor we had there that really gave a crap left a few months ago so I was sold.

And he was good, he listened, he gave me time which is normally harder to get out of a doctor than blood from a stone and when some nurse barged in he politely excused himself to deal with that as well as keeping them out of the room and came back apologising even though it wasn't his fault people don't know how to knock. He was really kind to me.

I told him what I wrote here, that I didn't think I could cope with work and I was in so much emotional and physical pain. He told me to take the week off work, and to let him know if that wasn't enough and also offered me pain killers for my legs.

Afterwards I sat in my car for a little bit while I sorted myself out then I told myself I needed to do this right so I headed to work. I was booked in for a flu shot anyway, so instead of cancelling it I turned up and got that. Last year we had a total rude cow doing the jabs but this time we had this lovely lady who asked how my day was going and I had to be that one person saying "lady, don't even ask" while holding back tears.

I keep on hoping.. for cake, by the kitchen counter....

Another post, another celebratory day.

I'm not happy.

I should be, we just had an epic Australia Day BBQ at our house that a lot of our friends came to, the food was great, music was good, atmosphere was 10/10.. it was a great day.

And now at the end of the night it's like.. what happened?

My husband is annoyed people went home fairly early (I don't see it as a problem because we intending on staggering the guests through-out the day), personally I didn't expect anyone to stay super late because of this and the fact that it was a very hot day. People are exhausted just being outside. He wanted to have a few drinks with friends later in the evening, and I get it. I do.

Now he's wasted and ranting about everything, he even dropped a freakin' cake because he tried to pick it up single-handedly (it was a very large cake). Luckily, I was on hand with a giant spatula to pancake-flip most of it back onto the platter and clean the rest of it up quick smart.

We had talked about this - I told him I didn't want him getting super drunk because we're mid cycle and I need his sperm to not be hungover. Obviously this didn't sink in and I feel like my usually pretty perfect husband kinda flipped me the bird here. He's then gone on to discuss our IVF situation with a friend of ours (a good friend, mind) which isn't the end of the world but I thought we were discussing together who we were going to tell before just doing it. This happened before with another friend, recently as well.

That, and whenever anyone asked if I was drinking he'd sorta say 'oh, she can't.' It seemed like he was kinda daring them to ask why. Again, I can understand this because it's frustrating. I would love to talk about this to more people so I don't feel so alone.. I would shout it from the rooftops!
But the more people that know about it... I feel like there's more pressure on me to perform. I feel like there's going to be the sympathetic tongue clucking when I don't or can't perform. I feel like I can't deal with that, and it's stressing me out more than ever.

Yew Near, Yew Nou

I will have you know that I was absolutely wrecked on New Years Eve.

No, I don't drink. I'd just come off a few days in a row of work (doing ten or more hours per day) so when I finished work that day and we had to go straight to our mate's party......

I tried to socialise.. I really did. In the end, the crowds, the noise, the horrible cigarette smoke and almost tripping over their dog constantly (If anyone is familiar with Mr. Tiddles from Discworld's Going Postal? Basically an elderly cat so set in it's way that if someone put an obstacle in his path he wouldn't go around it, he would just stop and wait for it to move. At certain times of the day, post office staff had to open the door so Mr. Tiddles could walk through it.) just got to me.

Escaping quietly to the adjacent lounge room inside.. I sat there, looked at memes, designed a dope tattoo flash and ate my meal quietly. I contemplated my life. I thought about the coming year. I longingly thought about sleep. I toyed with the idea of putting my Ipod on even though the stereo seemed to have speakers in every room of the house.

People walked past, occasionally noticing me and asking if I was okay or cracking some joke about how I'd found the good spot.
Everyone there was so nice, and the good thing about being 'the quiet one' is that you can bugger off every now and then and people usually respect that you need your space and leave you alone for a bit. I tried not to be rude, but I was feeling so hollow and lacking in energy that it was very hard not to appear as a total ass face.

India Uniform India

This cycle we were almost set to go to to egg pick up next week. I had been on a new drug - Menupur and then Orgalutran. However my egg numbers were still pretty low, so my ob/gyn recommended IUI - Inter-uterine insemination. Yesterday I took my trigger shot of Ovidrel, a humongous needle in which the solution inside was actually quite a small amount considering. Today, we were up at the crack on dawn to get down to the fertility centre to deposit some brogurt, which they then tested and sorted out, cleaning it and putting into two tubes. We came back after about an hour to collect this and then ran across the block to see my ob/gyn to actually carry out the procedure.

 This took all of ten minutes, if that. He used a speculum, much like a Pap smear. I won't say it was comfortable but I was too nervous to think about it much, so I only felt a strange cramp like pain when the catheter was inserted. I had been warned about cramping afterwards so I hadn't expected it straight away or during the procedure. It wasn't very bad though, nothing debilitating. I would describe it as period-lite.

That's how we did AIH (artificial insemination by husband) - so if all the sperm deposited directly into my cervix give us a child, a slight discomfort is perfectly fine with me! 

I had to stay prone for a while, which is understandable but annoying because I'd had to drink lots of water prior to the procedure and my bladder was cursing me. Honestly, it wasn't as much or as bad as an ultrasound but when you're nervous... Yeah, it doesn't help. 

So the three of us were sitting there (well, two of us were, I was lying down covering my butt with a sheet.) discussing next steps for either way. 

Telling you now, never thought I'd be this comfortable with general pantslessness outside of the home or even with injecting a million needles but look at me go! 

Sabbatical Piratical

So after basically being a sook for a few days, I've taken some time to get back to basics, or rather I'm pulling myself up by my strange, mismatched pirate themed socks.

That's not to say having emotions is bad.. seeing as how I don't normally have anything in me besides confusing rage, deadly rage, hilarious weird and blank kill-bot it was kinda nice to go through the right emotional spectrums and be human for once.

So yeah, have been getting back to basics - trying to reduce stress, keeping up with the vitamins (I've found a remarkable improvement in my hair and nail quality alone since starting to take all of these vitamins, so that's great) watching what I eat and started a new exercise regime.

Stress has been the biggest concern so far. The last few days I've found myself switching between severely agoraphobic times and then once outside my house - aggressive bouts of confidence.
That.. I don't know what's going on with.

I got my car serviced today and when the service assistant tried to up-sell me additional options I gave him a look. I'm not saying it withered anything, but it was definitely up there because I ended up getting the extras anyway at no charge and the guy nearly apologised to me.

Mopey update and sad gorilla gifs

Another day, another appointment, another scan.

Yeah, I successfully surfed my crimson tide and dismounted for a egg check-up. The numbers weren't great - in fact, despite all the additional crap I went through this cycle it didn't do a damn thing. I had to come back for an extra check this week because we weren't sure if one of the eggs was completely right or not because it was a lot larger than the others.

That was today, and we couldn't even find this extra large edition anywhere so we don't even know what the hell that was. We think it might have been a fluid sack that popped. Ob/gyn asked me if anything had hurt recently and I just sat there thinking because I'd felt a twinge the previous day but didn't worry about it as I hadn't wanted to stress too much.

I had felt so positive about this second scan because it had looked like we were going forward with egg pick up but again I went home empty handed so to speak. I'd had a week of holidays and I'm glad because I had about two to three days of sitting around listlessly planned now instead of all the home improvements and chores I had lined up. 

It's funny because you know it does no good to get depressed but apart from that second day when it really sort of hit home.. I've just felt kind of hollow. I wanted so badly to conceive but have yet again been told in polite, clinical terms that I'm a failure.

So we're having a month breather from the intense treatment I was doing. I'm to keep up the vitamins though. I'm also embarking on a fitness campaign not only to help my body but to distract myself.

My gym membership has long expired but I've taken to running around outside at work during my breaks and using their outdoor gym equipment which is pretty basic but does the job. 

I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. I have more energy, I can see a difference in my body shape even though my weight hasn't changed dramatically. My endurance is growing and so is my confidence. A bunch of guys at work even cheered me on the other day.

Another plus is that because I'm working out at work, I get to spend more time with my partner after work and don't have to wait for dinner or go outside in the dark/early morning. 

In other news, my sister brought some ultra sound photos around the other day and she's been happier than usual. My friend's baby has just taken his first steps. We went to visit some of my husband's relatives over the weekend and got asked twice about when we were going to have a family. 

It wasn't invasive or aggressive. One asked about us and our intentions when the pre-dinner conversation turned to nephews and nieces, the other dropped subtle hints that my partner's new car would be the kind of car you'd want to have when looking to start a family. 

Both times left me feeling like shit.