Hmmmwelllgoodevening

Yes, that's a perfectly respectable title I think.

It has been a little while, hasn't it?

Why?

Shit, are we going to start that weird-ass Greek chorus thing again?

I don't know, are we?

Why are you answering a question with another question? That's a sign of...

Why are you persisting in asking questions?

Who is speaking here?

Who are you?

What?

It's in the freezer, isn't it?

Yes, yes, 17.

Am I going mad?

Too late.

No need for a question mark on that one. Yes, it is too late. My sanity went the way of Elvis loooong ago.

Well, bbrrrrr, now that I have blocked that scene and succcessfully arrived in character of Blog Poster Number 4...let's begin.

It has been a few days since my last post because I had an instant worry as soon as I fell pregnant that the very raison d'etre for this particular blog had all but disappeared.

Here I was thinking TTC sequels, book deals, a telemovie script and a three-part special investigation on Oprah and it turns out the best I could manage was a 30-minute pilot.

Gash! Failure! I can hear you yelling it right now. Please stop. Haha.

You step on that cliched IVF rollercoaster and because you are so in the moment, and so focused on one cycle at a time, you never really think about the end. Of course that's what you are working towards, that's what you are doing it for...but for very complicated reasons of self-preservation, you don't allow yourself to think too much about the "prize" at the end. Because you may just not get it.

Today, I am three weeks' pregnant. What do I do now? It's too early for an OBGYN appointment. Too early for a scan.

The clinic nurse rang me this morning to see how I was going (lovely) and I shared the good news. "Oh, well done you," she said, surprised, and sounding disarmingly like a Jennifer Saunders character, perhaps an uppity politician's wife.

"What happens now?" I asked, anxious.

She explained that the doctor would want to do a six-week scan to see if there is a pregnancy still, looking for a "sac" (what?) and a heartbeat. And apart from that, it's just a case of keeping healthy and calm.

I think I have healthy down pat: I have been consumed with an intense obsession with full cream milk. And I have never been a milk fan. I slather it all over my cereal in the morning and lap it up like a cat who's got the cream. Ooh! Cream! Must put that on the list.

Everything becomes about the pregnancy. I went for a walk the other night along a busy-ish road. Lots of cars flew past, many of them spewing exhaust smoke into the air and up my nostrils. I suddenly felt the urge to hold my breath to keep the toxins away from my teeny blasty (it is a blastocyst at this stage...I prefer to disregard the "cyst" part of that word, thanks very much Mr Medicine). Because I am sure restricting oxygen to little blasty by holding my breath is going to be a whole lot better than breathing in a few carbo-mono-whatevers.

A lady at work was using a glu-stick and I remarked that I hadn't seen one since primary school, before immediately rushing up to take in a big whiff of the gluey end to gauge whether it still smelled the same as my memory. Red flag unfurled and raised itself too late. "Stop that! Think about the baby. The baby, Jerry."

Alcohol is off the menu, along with all those other potentially dodgy things: soft cheese, seafood, leftovers, BBQ chickens, pre-prepared salads, alfafa and a whole lot of herbal teas that I thought were safe, but come with lots of scary stories online. Google, are you here to help or hinder? I wonder sometimes.

I am also trying desperately to reduce my caffeine intake. Coffee has followed Elvis and my sanity out of the building, but I cannot - cannot - give up my English Breakfast. I won't. And I think I will be ok.

I am actually eating a lot more than I used to...but smaller amounts more often during the day. In fact, I feel like I am always eating there at my desk. Goodness, people will talk!

While the clinic nurse was on the phone, I took the chance to ask her about our six little embryos sitting in their cryo-home.

"Don't even think about that until your baby is at least one year old," she said.

Call me a cynic, but that then prompted me to enquire as to the cost to store those embryos. $225 every six months.

Hmmm. Was she targeting my deepest core emotions to perform a simple up-sell? I am a cynic. Fifteen years in journalism will do that to you, I'm afraid.

I'd like to think she wasn't chanting Tom Cruise's famous Jerry Maguire line in her head as we talked. Whatever her motivation for picking "one year old" as a good time to consider whether to donate or, I guess terminate is the word, those embryos...it is something we will have to deal with.

Eventually.

Apart from that, I feel alright. Not as tired as last week and kind of bloated (d'uh!). I am in a constant state of "fuzzy in the brain" and will often forget what I am doing/saying even though I am in the middle of it. Quite disconcerting, really. But I am not sick and I am doing ok.

Hope it stays that way!

A new acronym

We are all agreed on my love of acronyms, yes?

FYI, they're OTT and I refuse to keep that on the DL or the QT.

Oh, please, I am not going there again. I don't have the energy. I have never been this tired in my entire life...and that includes the time I stayed up with my best friend in Year 8 for THE ENTIRE NIGHT to witness the exact moment when the street lights were switched off.

CRASH-BANG-KABOOM-KERPLUNK-SMASH-POW-SHAZAM!

Wow, did you feel that? Get me Bruce Willis and Liv Tyler into emergency sequel talks, stat, Armageddon is back. And she's angry.

That's right: that was the very last pregnant woman complaining of tiredness the world could take. Apparently, the earth's core is pre-programmed to crack and erupt if a certain pre-determined quota of whingeing pregnant women is reached. Me back there, just then talking about being (whisper...tired) pushed the planet past its tipping point. So, go home to your loved ones, people...this is your last day on Earth.

Anyway, I am not going to go there with the moaning about the dead weights on my eyelids. Not tonight, I am buggered. Oh shit! I went there, didn't I?

Look, I am vainly trying to get back to the point of this post. What's it called again? Right...a new acronym.

FG.

Any ideas? Let me shed some of that dawn street light on the subject for you.

Fertility Guilt.

Akin to survivor's guilt, but not the initials of that dimwit played by Tom Hanks in that atrocious movie. (Sorry Robin Wright, I love you despite your choice of husband, but that really was a bad flick.)

So, I am pregnant. I am elated and a thousand other things right now. I also feel some guilt. Guilt when telling my new little e-community peeps who are still clinging white-knuckled to the TTC rollercoaster, one many have been on for longer than my two-year-old has been alive. Guilt when posting an "I'm pregnant" comment on a TTC support group over at Aussie Mummy Bloggers. Part of me felt heartless doing that. I am sorry if I caused anyone any pain. Or jealousy. Of course, that was never my intention.

Look, I was raised Catholic - we got guilt covered. But I know that I am someone who would feel twinges of jealousy while starting to hum absent-mindedly "What About Me?" had I received similar news.

Isn't that atrocious. But it's the truth. Let me tell you, my over-arching emotion would be genuine joy for anyone who gets good baby-growing news. No doubt. But there would be twinges of some negative stuff too, I won't lie.

But it's like the way I feel about comparing development milestones in your kids. There is no point twisting yourself in knots if your toddler has not mastered toilet training, say, as quickly as "everyone else" you know: they all get there in the end. So too, will many of you reading this. I cannot know it will happen for all of you, no one knows that. But I do know that I have never laughed as much as I have these past few weeks, I have never jumped on Jay for random cuddles as often I have in recent times and I have never felt as loved as I have by all those physically and electronically around me...and I know that helped.

The good stuff. Focus on it. Use it, trust and try to let go. Alright, somebody stop me before I use the phrase "at the end of the day..."

May I please leave you with today's random observation from me.
Those backwards signs on the front of cars that belong to a business. You know the ones. Stickers that spell out words, but they are stuck on in reverse.


"Jokes" like this may seem harmless, but a 2009 NSBP* study found they are actually responsible for extending dyslexics' admission times to psychiatric wards by an average of 13.9months.

Why do you only ever see them the wrong way around? When do you ever see them in your rear view mirror, at which point, you are stunned and amazed at their twisty-reversy genius? Answer? Never. You only ever see them on the front of a car on the other side of the road coming towards you. Then you almost have an accident staring at the ridiculous letter formations trying to activate a deep, dark recess of your brain to actually decipher what the hell it says. It's the same dark recess that was particularly active during your tweens when such astounding items as invisible ink (imagination/perception), magic sand (spatial engineering) and elastics (physics/fractions/geometry) were commonplace in daily life. I saw one this morning, it was "CINAHCEM ELIBOM". I was like "whaaaaa?" as I craned my neck to catch it as it went past. Stupid thing was, I looked in my rear view mirror to get a better look - at the BACK of the car. I actually did that. Of course, there was nothing there. Haha, isn't that ridiculous? Alanis should so have written about that instead of freaking fly-streaked chardonnay.

eyB.
*National Society for Bullshit Prevention