Garbage trucks at dawn

What a week it has been.

Wow. I have spent some 14 years as a journalist, being a Stockholm Syndrome hostage to a cruel master who greedily holds close the Holy Grail secret that finally reveals the skill of writing a first par that grabs the reader’s attention sufficiently to ensure readership into pars two and beyond – and that is the best I can come up with?

Hmm, and supposedly 14 years learning to write more concisely hey? Not.

Anyway.

It has been quite a week. Throw in two 4.30am starts (did you know it’s dark then?) with a three-year-old in tow for two early weekday trips to Brisbane and one bizarre menstrual cycle that saw me break with a 20-year tradition and ovulate early rather than late and the upshot is, we missed our chance at an embryo transfer this month.

But that is fine. Honestly.

We didn’t waste an embryo, we became increasingly familiar with a new doctor and new IVF process after losing our baby last year and those dawn starts enabled more than 10 sightings of our son’s current obsession, garbage trucks. So you know, this cloud is silver-tinged on more than just its lining, people!

Our new doc is a bit different, in that he prefers to do a urinary LH testing kit, rather than blood tests, to determine when ovulation is happening.

We went down last Thursday and I started the test on Friday morning, finishing five days later. There was a slight mini surge on day four, and nothing on the other days.

Weird.

Even the doc’s face screwed up a bit in confusion – and this guy has three decades of practical experience in women’s goings-on “down there”. But he did say some women just have this happen sometimes; they don’t ovulate, they ovulate early or they ovulate, um, late.

It was a long weekend here, so I was told to call the doc’s office with a progress report on Tuesday morning. In my mind, I had vaguely anticipated ringing in on Tuesday and expecting to get an appointment to go into theatre for a frozen embryo transfer on either Thursday or Friday.

Instead, I got a second appointment the next day and an increasing feeling that we had missed the bus.

I had a bit of a cry at that realisation...but I now realise I only reacted that way because I had done my old trick of anticipating again.

When reality was different to what I had anticipated, I temporarily lost it.

Jesus Mary and Joseph, you would think I would have learned to go with that damn flow by now. Especially after everything that happened.

But you know that saying about tricks and old dogs.

Anyway, by the time we had gone for our second appointment and I had rung in for the blood results, I kind of knew our opportunity had gone.

Turns out I was three days post ovulation and while the doc said he could have tried a transfer today, it would have been guesswork and unlikely to take.

And by then, I was calm and relieved.

It is fine. Honestly.

And that bloody reason everyone bangs on about to explain the why of strange things sometimes does actually exist. Here I was thinking it was some new age figment...

Perhaps my body is not quite ready yet. Perhaps my mind isn’t either.

Some other force may have been at work here to ensure all this scheme of things stuff just works out in the end.

Besides, we will be back counting city rubbish trucks at dawn in four short weeks.

Bring it on!