There’s a service being held in the Chapel in CUMH today – but we made the decision not to go. I worry that my large twin-filled belly might be difficult for some people there to see – depending on where they are with their grief or loss at the moment.

2011 was a difficult year for us. We lost our first pregnancy so unexpectedly, after seeing a heartbeat and everything. My heart broke and has never been the same again. Our second and third losses weren’t quite the same shock. Now we knew firsthand that things don’t always go so well. But they seeded in us a deep and abiding fear that has followed us all the way through this pregnancy. I ask myself every day “Is this the moment when our happiness is all going to be snatched away again?”. So far we’ve been lucky.

I know we are far from the only couple in our group of friends who’ve experienced this kind of loss. Some of you have felt you could share your story with us, and the statistics alone tell us that one in four women will experience pregnancy or infant loss. I suppose the point of this remembrance day is to give a voice to that grief that so many of us have unfortunately felt.

There’s a “thing” going on tonight – called The Wave of Light where at 7pm – your local time – you’re encouraged to light a candle. I’ll be doing that. For all our little muskateer embryo-fetuses that didn’t make it to see us in real life.

Well, the last one has been being my downfall. If you want to get up at 5am, you probably need to be asleep (regularly at least) before midnight. This is the part that I just haven’t been accomplishing – for one reason or another. And while I can manage one, or even two nights on 4 hours sleep, that’s where it starts to fall down. At the same time, I believe I *can* make it more routine for myself, and I feel that a longer term goal of getting up at 6am every day (especially on days I’m not working) will be achievable.

So, my plan – such as it is – is to keep trying with the 5am starts until I get 7 of them in a row, but move onto my next thing-a-week from next Monday. I am, as yet, undecided what it will be. Handwritten letter a day to a friend was suggested by someone and I might just go for that.

In other news, the parents’ boat is returning this Sunday and I’m very excited to have them home. Hence this blog title being ripped from Bob Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In”.

It started when I tried giving up facebook for a week (more on that in another post when I get around to it), followed by an impetus to tweet one #positivething in my life, for a week (inspired by the remarkable Jay’s post here). I gained so much for myself with both projects (and I’ll blog more details on each week when I get a chance) that I decided to start a mini project each week.

I feel that this is something that will allow me to “taste” different things that I might want to incorporate parts of into my life, and generally try to become more positive and more adventurous. But without the overhead of trying too many things at once – I will only commit to one mini project a week, and I will attempt to blog my findings at the end of each week. (I will do catch-up blog posts on Week 1 & 2 shortly in the next few days.)

So .. so far, I have:

• Week 1: No Facebook
• Week 2: Tweet a #positivething a day
• Week 3: Give up negative thoughts and statements (this is going to be hard!)

Other things I’m considering: Getting up at X-time every morning (e.g. 5/6 a.m.), Veganism, No TV shows /movies (I already have no TV channels, but I watch things other ways), TBD, TBD ….

So, if you have suggestions for things I could try for a week, I’d love to hear them! I am not guaranteeing I will try all suggestions – this is not a challenge site (yet – but I’ll certainly consider them!

Thanks for reading my somewhat badly explained and scattered post!

Some of you may have guessed from our relative silence about the whole thing that our most recent embryo transfer wasn’t a complete failure. You’d have been right – on St. Patrick’s Day I learned I was pregnant. On April 1st we had our 6-week scan and everything looked on track with a perfect little heart-beat and everything. We had a small bit of bleeding later that evening, but as it didn’t continue, we managed to curtail our panic, and follow along the usual path. Things seemed fine and normal; I felt a little queasy, I felt a little achey, we both felt ecstatic and hopeful.

Yesterday morning, at the 8-week scan, we learned that our tiny baby no longer had a beautiful heart-beat, and seemed to have stopped growing at some point the previous week. We were, and are feeling pretty kicked and heartsore. I don’t really feel like talking about it, and I’m not sure when I will. But I suppose I wanted to not hide it either. He (or she) lived for a while. His heart beat and now it doesn’t anymore, and we feel a very very keen loss.

So, what now? Apparently we wait. For reasons of protocol, we must wait until a second scan on Wednesday to “confirm” before I can stop taking progesterone and oestrogen. But don’t let that fool you into thinking there is hope, there isn’t, this is just procedure. (So please don’t ask me if it “just might be too early” or anything like that, because it hurts to try to explain again).

After that, we wait and hope I miscarry naturally (the very thought of which makes me shake with fear), because the alternative is a D&C and that could impact future conception.

After that … well, I wonder if things would be different if we didn’t have four frozen embryos still waiting for  us. I don’t know when we’ll cycle again. Decisions like that are a long way in the future, but I think we will try again. We’re slowly getting through the hours at the moment, functioning as best we can, crying sometimes and holding each other a lot. We don’t regret in the slightest the people we told of our pregnancy, for they got to celebrate the happiness of the brief new life, and mourn with us and support us now.

Today we planted a small garden for Aramis (that was his embryo name, after René d’Aramis de Vannes from the Three Muskateers) and our other 3 muska-embryos. One of the little rose bushes is called “Dawn Chorus”, the other “Thinking of You”. (You can click to see bigger images.) It helped a bit.

I’ve been wanting to write a blog post about our infertility issues (should that be our fertility issues? I feel we’re doing marvelously at the old INfertility…), but it’s difficult to know what to say. And some days I feel a bit raw and I really worry that I’ll get upset by people’s comments. So, while I’ve tried to be pretty open on Twitter, that land of sound-bites and truncated @-replies, I’ve kept away from actually blogging about it.

Okay. I guess I’ll start at the beginning. I met Gareth, Gar is awesome, we love each other, and we decided that most definitely how fan-bloody-tastic would it be to be involved in the creation of something that had a little bit of both of us, and try to give it love and a good life and all sorts of stuff like that. It’s not an unusual story.

Gareth’s mother was very very ill, and we realized that the years we would have with her would probably be way shorter than we wanted (they were shorter even than we had hoped unfortunately), and so we started down the exciting road of opening the procreation door a lot sooner than people knew. But every month nothing kept happening. Yes we timed things, yes we tried “relaxing” (By the way that whole ‘just relax’ thing is a huge myth and makes people with fertility problems feel bad too, so I’m super glad it’s a myth.), ovulation kits (I still really like the “smiley” face the digital ones give you that say it’s Go Time!), temperature taking, All-Sorts-of-Stuff-You-Really-Don’t-Want-to-Know-About. And yet we were faced over and again by the whitest blankest space in the world – the space that should contain a second line on a pregnancy test.

So, we went to the doctor who did blood tests and stuff on me (all looked well, better than average ovarian function, nothing concerning), and the usual boy-analysis on Gar – unfortunately things didn’t look so well here, and the long and short of it was that we were told that, due to MFI (Male Factor Infertility, Oligoteratozoospermia, if anyone is interested in the really long name) our chances of getting pregnant naturally were next to nil (And yes, miracles happen all the time, “just relax”, “I knew this couple who …”, etc. But no.), and in fact we weren’t even in a position to be helped out with IUI (turkey baster method – tho it’s a bit more complicated than that), so it was straight to IVF with ICSI.

I have to add that the timing of this news was, for added fun, the week after Gareth’s mother died.

We decided to wait until after our wedding (last June) before proceeding with treatments, but jumped in with more feet than two people have any right to, and on our return from Iceland I began the fun process of lots and lots and lots of injections. And we did pretty well – 22 eggs, 20 mature, 18 fertilized, 12 made it to 3 days old, and 8 to blastocyst (5/6 days). But I also got OHSS, and our embabies were cryo-frozen, and I was a stone heavier, and back to waiting.Two months later they defrosted 2 of our blastocysts for transfer (more hormones for me in preparation for this, but thankfully no injections this time), both survived the defrost, both were transferred, neither lived any further.

It was really, ridiculously, crushingly sad for us. I mean, way WAY more than I could ever have expected.

Probably not helped by the fact that my reaction to the huge amounts of progesterone involved – amongst other symptoms – nausea and dizziness.

Anyway. Six of our progeny remain in the deep freezer, two of whom are coming out next Wednesday, which terrifies and excites me in equal, huge measure. If this attempt doesn’t work, our silly hearts will be broken again. And then we will try again.

So, some of you may be wondering why I even want to talk about this. I kind of don’t. I kind of want to just keep it tied in a secret ball, crushed and held down inside my stomach. But, you see, after 2 years, it’s become such a huge part of my life (no, it doesn’t “define” me, but it is part of me). And I think it’s wrong that there’s such a stigma attached to it. I think it’s horrible that – on top of not getting the pregnancy and offspring we’ve been dreaming of – something out there is making us feel like failures, broken and ashamed of our inability to reproduce. I don’t know what all of the solution to that is, but I think that we’ll start with honesty and facts, and that maybe along with that, the wider world will start to realise that this is actually a pretty common issue (1 in 6 Irish couples), and maybe along with that, infertile people will start to feel less isolated from “normal” society.

A couple of points before I sign off on this already over-long blog post.

1. Infertility is absolutely categorized as a disease by the WHO (World Health Organization). I would never say that anyone has the right to a child, but I do feel like we have the right to try to conceive our own child.
2. Adoption is a great thing for many many people the world over, but is not something we are looking at right now – perhaps not ever. I also tend to feel a little bit aggrieved when I hear the phrase “Just Adopt” – as anyone who has been close to the process will tell you, it is far from that simple, and moreover, if you’re going to tell us to adopt, you should be saying the same thing to any normally-fertile couples who are trying to conceive.

Thanks to anyone who has read this far. I welcome comments, but please do comment with care, it’s a very sensitive topic.

“We’re often quite violent with our bodies”.

I was letting the water run from one nostril to another, and had such as strong impulse to want to force it through faster. I think this is indicative of a lot of how we treat ourselves – or at least, I know I do, and I suspect many of us are guilty of the same. We scrub our skin clean, we vigorously brush our teeth, we squeeze ourselves into ill-fitting clothes or shoes, we force food into us at speed – and all at the same time, with an judgey inner monologue criticizing ourselves for not doing it better. Or faster. Or whatever-er.

And I don’t think we need to be at such odds with our environment.

I’m not much of a one for creationist theory or higher-power spirituality; I believe that we evolved in this universe, to fit this universe. And to me it makes sense that we’d be mostly set-up for the things we encounter in our environment – certainly the basics like eating, washing and dressing. I think we do ourselves harm by the kind of constant push-back against our natural flow that I often find myself engaging in. If our nasal passages need cleaning, maybe it makes sense that the acceleration due to gravity is the optimum rate for them to be cleaned. So, I’m resolved to try to be more mindful in many of the things that I do.

I’m currently doing my best to sip my coffee and not burn my mouth in anxious gulping down. I’m taking bites of the food that I want to eat for breakfast (which today turned out to be fruit, but tomorrow might be croissants – but I’m resolved to try to listen at least). I’m trying not to stress about the million & one things I need to get done today (as every day), but approach them more calmly and within the flow of my day.

And when I use my neti pot, I’m going to relax and imagine warm heavy rain peacefully falling.

So, like I said. A little, probably obvious thought, but one I’m finding has changed my perspective a lot. And I’m really hoping it will work out and not make me late for everything. I’ll keep you posted.

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The last two weeks were without bloggery on my part (despite the fact that my many reminder widgets duly reminded my of my duties). My father was visiting and we took something of an impromptu holiday for much of his time here.

And now I’m back in front of a blank screen, all the thoughts I thought I had to share have somehow escaped. Possibly they are out chasing birds with the puppy.

This is likely to be something of a patchy blog update. I’ll jump from topic to topic, no doubt. Probably quite like having a conversation with me. Or a flea.

I had a bit of a trip in a Time Machine this evening (oddly enough, this seems to be a metaphor other friends have been using on their blogs and the like, recently). I was watching a recent episode of the TV show Skins which – through characters and music pulled me so thoroughly into a past mind state, it was scary.  I’ve experienced a similar thing reading certain books. Murakami’s Norwegian Wood comes to mind, in particular. (That’s twice in two blog posts I’ve linked to books by Murakami. People might start to get the impression I read nothing else!)

Anyway, I’ve escaped from the past for now, so onwards with blogging.

Puppy got hit by a car. I doubt that is anything close to news to anyone reading this blog, as you have likely seen my Twitter feed on the day.

“I can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.”

It was shocking and traumatic, and I think she recovered from the incident more quickly than we did. It brings the pre-sad for the day she will die. A terrible type of time-travel to be indulging in, given that she’s less than a year old!  So, I’ll tuck it down in the back of my brain, shelved with thoughts of my own future demise, buried under a flimsy pile of sunshine, candy and tea. A pile not as dusty as I’d like .. 

I’m not managing to shake this funk as quickly as I’d like.

This week is mainly about reorganizing and re-focusing. I’m being a lot less productive than ideal on a number of fronts (nearly all of them, in fact). To this end I’ve created a Remember The Milk account where the main recurring task is to set up a To-Do list for the day. It them IMs me over Google Talk to remind me of what I’m supposed to be doing, rather than browsing the Internet.  

I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve been using it for at least a month, but so far I’m pretty impressed.  I’m failing at getting it to integrate with iCal or GoogleCalendar in the ways I’d like, but seeing as I don’t really use those that much, it doesn’t bother me.

Anyway – next on the list is a date with Alice in Wonderland, so I’d best get my best pop-corn eating smile on. 

Anon.

I continued running off and on through a house move and a job-loss, gradually increasing my distance and time (though not to anything absurdly strenuous or impressive – at a guess I was getting close to 8 /9 km in 45 – 50 minutes of running). The increases in my exertion and stamina seemed to coincide “nicely” with the increasingly difficult nature of my personal relationships, and when, after 5 years of stress and heartache, my romantic relationship ended, running was an obvious choice to focus on.

Shortly after my 30th birthday, I entered my first proper road race – a 10 km race as a subset of the Tokyo Marathon to be held the following February in 2008. I wasn’t far off running 10 km at that point, and made it a personal goal to try to break the hour and be in the top 100 women running the 10km race.

I also entered a second race due to be held in March 2008. A 3okm race held in a city south of Yokohama. This is what I was *really* training for.

And training too hard, it seems, as two weeks before the Tokyo 10km, I injured my hip in what I now believe to have been a stress fracture. If it didn’t begin as one, it certainly finished that way, as I obstinately ran the 10km with a chip time of ~55 minutes, placing as the 88th runner in the women’s 10km. (Damn right I’m proud! )

The resulting injury and pain stopped me training in any way for 6 months, and in any way seriously for a year. 

In the meantime I moved back to Ireland, where I attempted to infect Gareth with my jogging joy.  

Mostly, it wasn’t a whole lot of joy for him. He joined me out of politeness, eagerness for fitness, and his usual open-minded willingness to try anything that doesn’t appear to hurt anyone other than himself. We managed 3 minutes of jogging before he begged for respite. I needed to reset my expectations, and a month or so later, we began our first attempt at this plan.

It was another year and many many resets later before we finally reached the end of it. Recovery following Swine Flu and Helen’s death was helped by running (the former on Dr.’s recommendations – I was surprised, but apparently jogging at least 15 minutes a day will help your sticky Swine Flu lungs).

It was at some point within this strugglesome training that we made the crazy decision to run the Cork City Marathon, approximately 2 weeks before our wedding this coming June.

Training is going according to schedule and we are ramping up slowly. This Saturday will see us sweating romantically through a quarter marathon distance (10.4 km), and in March, Gareth’s first road race, and my longest, in Craughwell, Co. Galway. We’re not expecting anyone to travel up to cheer us on, but if you have any internet cheers, we sure would appreciate them.

I guess I really can understand how Murakami-san wrote a whole book just on his jogging hobby!  Sorry for going on about it for so long, and congrats to anyone who made it down this far!  So, let me know – what do you think about, when you think about Running?

I did my usual Play One Game at a con – as I have done for all 5 I have now attended. It’s getting more fun, but I still feel I would be reluctant to commit to anything like regular role-playing. I like to claim that it’s down to a desire not to commit to scheduled activity, but there’s not a small part of it that’s down to being unsociable. I actively crave time in my own head – especially after long bouts of time in large groups. With Itzacon a mere 2 weeks away I had better hibernate in my room in order to ready myself sufficiently.

In the meantime, I am working away on my piece for the Torture Company challenge. I am pretty sure most people who read this blog have been pinged to come join the Artistic Challenge Facebook group – where we have a Theme a Fortnight to create (anything anything anything) to.  I’m attempting my very first digital coloring of a drawing, which is coming out okay, I think. It’s slow going and I’m already after realising mistakes I’ve made (which I’m not going to rectify at this point, I think. Shall just “learn for the future”.).

Anyway, I poke any and all of my readers who is interested in making fun stuff to check it out – even just have a lurk and see what other people create. I’m excited to see the results of this first one.

As for me, I will take this sore sore throat and head to bed, internetless and dreamful for at least 8 hours.

Be well.