While my frittata gently warms...

Ok, so I have exactly seven minutes before my frittata is ready.

And don't think the irony has escaped me that I am about to blog about my body "image", for wont of a better phrase, while I am starvingly waiting for my lunch to cook. (Not sure how many grammatical/spelling rules I broke back there, but anyway.)

We had our last session w the counsellor last Wednesday. Well, last as in last for 2010 and last until we most likely call her again next year when we get pregnant again. (Not sure if I should have used "if" back there...told you my optimism had been dented by this whole experience of losing a baby.)

Anyways, it was a good session. Both T and I cried however. And there's nothing like therapy to make you realise how far and how not far you have come in one short hour.

Crying always takes us by surprise in those sessions. I know that sounds silly, but here is why. It's been two months since we lost the baby, and we do not regularly collapse as crying, heaving, sobbing messes into each other's arms while we are at home, during the normal course of a day.

The fact is there is just not the time for that. And I know that sounds weird. But there's Jay, there's work, there's the summer seedlings for the veggie garden to plant, there's that thing from that shop that I must pick up, there are deadlines, there's the Christmas ham to book, there's Medicare, there are Christmas cards, Christmas parties, oh, my, god, do, I, have, to, go, on?

But for one short hour or so each fortnight, we have been ushered into a small office out the back of the very hospital where, in Room 13 on September 23, I gave birth to our lifeless 16 week and four day old baby.

My grandma is looking after Jay when we go to the counsellor, I have left work at work and it's just us two and the counsellor in that room talking about one single experience and how it's affected us.

It's the only time we get to stop. To think hard about what it's done to us. Is it any wonder we cry.

This week it was more heartbreak for T as we talked about how deserted she has been by her parents (who don't condone our relationship - like I said, that's a whole other blog right there.) Tears, naturally.

Then there was me talking about how I had approached exercise in the preceeding eight days with the fervour of a Nazi Luftwaffe squadron leader: pretty intensely.

Problem was I had been sick with a head cold from hell at the same time - but I still went nuts bike riding, running, doing cardio exercise tapes any chance I could get.

Why?

The reason suddenly leapt out at me during our counselling session. I am desperate to get my pre-baby body back.

Now, normally you would associate that statement with someone who had gone full-term and given birth to a healthy baby. You'd purse your lips, turn them down into a mock frown and tilt your head to the side as you read something like that...sympathising that such a feat can be hard. Tough, naw.

But this is not some superficial Hollywood tabloid-type desire. It's simply about being a healthy weight.

Ok, so I am not obese. I get that. But my usual hover weight has been blown out of the water by this pregnancy cut short.

I am sure my own body is freaking itself out. I can imagine it going "Wait..now I'm sure last time I looked we had a baby in here. Where the hell is it? What in tarnation did I do with it?"

I am also not known for my patience, and so I expected to regain that magical hover weight after eight ridiculous days of exercise when I should have been resting my head coldy head.

The reason I was so hell-bent on getting it back is because I want to physically erase what has happened. I want all the cells in my body to forget, to go back to the way they were. That way, we can start again...back at the same diving board we leapt from all those months ago.

Slightly unrealistic, granted, but can you blame me. A deep part of me feels let down by my body, the body that was pregnant for not long enough. I want to get rid of any trace of that body and start again.

I have since mellowed a little bit about the exercise, and have actually noticed old clothes fitting almost as well as they did...before.

They do feel different though. Perhaps they always will. I cannot ever deny being changed irreversably by this. Inside and out.

Surgery tomorrow

Repeat it with me: must not complain again about being tired, must not complain again about being tired.
Yes, that broken record is now smashed into tiny particles.

How about we focus on some positives - like the red letters adorning today.
Today, people, marks the last day of injections!!!!!! Happy days are here again!
I set my alarm to do the last one at 1am today. Thank the lord they have changed the type of syringe since T did it - and it is now not the massive horse needle that looked like an enormously thick skewer and just screamed "I am going to hurt you real bad" and is instead a quaint little old glass syringe with a needle exactly the same size as the Puregon one I've been taking for a fortnight.
It reminded me of something a tragically fascinating poet might use to shoot up in the back loo of Les Deux Magots in a Paris of the 1920s...complete with an absinthe chaser or something.

No absinthe required in this case. Quite frankly I may as well be permanently pissed...don't they say fatigue and drunkenness are basically the same? I put the cheese back in the freezer the other day and am just depressingly accepting of the fact now that whenever I click on Google I almost always completely forget what I am meant to be searching for in the nanoseconds it takes for the home page to come up.

I had to get T to get out of bed and stand with me as I did the 1am prick, in the glow of the oven light, activated for eerie effect and dim enough so it didn't completely blind my hitherto-slumbering eyes.
I don't know what the hell I thought she was going to do to help.
In fact all she did was stand there looking dazed before suddenly putting both hands up to her face and making an "aawwweeeuuuww" sound just as I stuck the needle in.
"Oh, baby," she said. "You don't know what that does to my stomach." (as in, it turns it...)
Um, WHAT IN THE SAM HILL DO YOU THINK IT'S DOING TO MY STOMACH??!! It's damn ouchy, it's making me grouchy, bloated, more moody than a schizophrenic and feeling like I'm on a rollercoaster through Strung Out City, alright??
Thanks for your support. Back to bed with you. Haha.

So, that was Ovidrel. It "stimulates late follicular maturation", a fancy way for saying it gets your eggs ready to be collected.
That's the go for tomorrow.
In the meantime I am fending off Jay, who insists on climbing over very specific areas of my anatomy that are suddenly quite sore...in fact I swear his heels and elbows have just had an in-built ovary AND breast-seeking device implanted. I have found I have been quite bloated in the lower abdomen - and fair enough too I guess.

I did in fact get quite an attack of the "hard done by" earlier...I was just contemplating how relatively easy it was for T and I to do all this without a little person in the house.
All the associated logistics, paraphernalia, water bottles, favourite toys, snacks, distractions, second favourite toys deliberately hidden from sight so they make full diversionary impact once sighted, tissues, balls, socks, hats, crucial pieces of leaf that JUST MUST COME IN THE CAR WITH US NOW etc - none of that, none of it, existed last time.

I am also so tired, did I mention that already? And that makes reasoning with a two year old pretty much impossible 99% of the time. My short fuse just got a whole lot shorter!
But look, in the scheme of things, I think I have fared pretty well so far. And the lack of sleep is undoubtedly a preparation for things to come.

**by the way, I have only just now worked out how to correct my time zone settings. FYI...for all previous posts...um...guess! Or pretend you were in Alaska, which is where I think they were originally set.