The Waiting Game

It is funny, the whole infertility thing - but not very amusing. In your twenties it never crosses your mind, birth control seeming more relevant. Now it seems to be socially acceptable to chatter about conception tips, vitamins and supplements and even compare notes on consultants.

 I think it is great now that infertility is no longer a taboo subject. However, I still struggled to find sympathy for Mylene Klass when she bemoaned her 18 month wait to conceive. 18 months? The Pickle is 4 and we have never not been trying! I feel a bitch, but fertility and hormones are bound in together, and even if I am pleased that she is now expecting I can't empathise with her wait.
 
I am amazed by the attitudes to it. I was in casualty one long night recently and chatting to a consultant; he was talking about his training and the different jobs he had done. He revealed how the one job he could not do is fertility. He looked at me, saying how unfair it was the people like us struggled to conceive then others had issues over how to control their families - by implication talking about who deserves children. I don't subscribe to that way of thinking, there are no undeserving Mums, just a range of stories from triumph the tragedy about struggling to do our best (or just to cope). But, even then it is still loaded; someone I care about is undergoing IVF for a first child - I find it hard not to consider that maybe she really deserves the luck more than me.

It is certainly, for me, so different second time around. Before the Pickle every period was difficult, another month of hopes dashed. When we finally got to see the consultant I was told to loose weight and then they would see me in a few months time. So I did a major detox and sure enough I got pregnant. Was it the detox? I am not sure, we got more strategic about when we tried, I was taking vitamin supplements and going to a homeopath - so it may have been any of a number of reasons, or just Mother Nature kicking in.

This time around I have found the detox more difficult, in fact my effort could be described as best as half hearted. When I last checked, many months ago, I was at the same weight as when the Pickle was conceived. I have given up caffeine and since being a Mum my drinking is not what it used to be. It is only recently when the medical intervention has really started that I have got religious about my folic acid.

So where are we now? Mildly hopeless but hopeful (I don't think think that is an oxymoron or a Jane Austen title 'Sense and Sensibility'/'Pride and Prejudice/'Hopeless but Hopeful'?). The medical intervention? That is a story for another day.