Barren Mare

Anti-climax

Well, fuck-a-doodle-do. I think we missed the window of opportunity. E. turned up last night, bearing vast amounts of decadent food to help me feed my cold. Including a gigantic chocolate fudge cake- is he prescient, or just sweet?

While he was unloading everything I snuck off to the bathroom to ascertain whether there were signs that we might still be in business. (Another bit of rhyming slangage for ya-"Cervical position=fingers on a mission".) Temping was useless this month since I had been running a fever on and off for most of the week which had thrown everything out of whack. But I find that the old mucus test tends to be the best barometer for me.

So there I am, foraging around only to discover that the vast amount of fertile goo I had been secreting for most of the week had DRIED UP. Completely gone. Gone, gone, gone. And for me, once it's gone, that's it. Ovulation has passed me by.

To say I wasn't in the mood anyway would be an understatement, what with my having to pause every five minutes for extended coughing fits. But I think if there had been a chance, I would have made a real effort- and I know E. would have.

I am frustrated. Much as I hate the goddam two week wait, at least I usually have some scrap of hope to hold on to and sustain me during that time. Missing ovulation without having so much as attempted to put sperm near egg is just...lame. It's a complete anti-climax, in more ways than one.

I feel like I have been running, running, running through the airport (you know, like in the movies where they pole vault over the barriers, etc). I am panting furiously, clutching my passport in one sweaty paw, gripping my stylish little Coach holdall in the other. Only I find when I at last reach the gate, the plane has left without me. The airline staff are disinterested. And there isn't another flight scheduled for a month.

Tell me, how is it I can work a full time job, book our summer holiday, manage six different email accounts, pay the bills for two flats in two different cities, keep those flats clean, maintain and insure a car, complete E.'s tax return on time, VOTE in two different countries for fuck's sake- and yet am unable to manage to have sex with my partner on a few crucial days every month?

Rhyming Slang

It dawned on me as I was trudging reluctantly toward another day at work with my sore throat that what the world of infertility really needs is.....Cockney rhyming slang.

For those of you who are unfamilar with rhyming slang, (or haven't seen Guy Ritchie films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) it is said to have orginate in London's East End in the mid-19th century. Cockney rhyming slang uses substitute words, usually two, as a coded alternative for another word. The final word of the substitute phrase rhymes with the word it replaces. So for example- the cockney rhyming slang for the word 'stairs' is "apples and pears." Drunk would be "elephant's trunk"

As in, I fell down the apples and pears when I was elephant's.

Cockney rhyming slang then developed as a secret language of the London underworld from the 1850's, when villains used the coded speech to confuse police and eavesdroppers.

So, my thinking is that it's ideal for communications for all things infertility. This way, I can send e-mail from work about E.'s SA results and no one, except for others in the Infertile Rhyming Slang know will understand what I am talking about.

For example, instead of "luteal phase", I will say, "I have a really short Rutherford B. Hayes!".

I'm not firing on all cylinders this week, so thus far, all I have come up with are the following:

* infertile- snapping turtle
* ovulate- starting gate- (or alternatively, guess the date)
* babymaking sex- tyrannosauraus rex.
* pregnancy test- hope laid to rest (or alternatively, pee obsessed)
* ultrasound- theater in the round
* semen analysis- flaccid paralysis

Well... it's a start.

Infertility Rhyming slang- hours of fun for the whole non-family! Anybody care to join in?

Snuffling like a piggy

I have some sort of throat infection, and after two and half days of struggling to work, I gave up and came home at lunch time. My throat feels like it is lined with sand paper, and there is a dry, raspy cough going on, which intermittedly results in expulsion of unspeakable goo.

This is not good. I don't know why I am surprised- this happens almost every year during the so-called Scottish summer. It's the direct result of weather that changes so fast it can make your head spin. One minute it will be bright and sunny and almost warm, the next torrential rain. It's very very difficult to know what to wear every day. Inevitably you will be caught as I was over the weekend, in a downpour, wearing only a cotton t-shirt and thin combats (not shorts- I don't even own a pair of shorts- there is no need here).

Half the people at work must have been similarly drenched, because there are a lot of sore throats going around. Of course, this is a vastly unhealthy nation. Exposure to disgusting hacking and coughing by those around you is the norm. Take the bus to the town centre and you'll see what I mean- old men with smoker's cough gagging next to you, children with loose phlegmy gurgles.

E. is usually very kind to me when I am sick, but he has a real aversion to the sound of someone coughing, or blowing their nose- it drives him insane. If he hears someone spluttering away, he turns to me and says under his breath,

"That's totally unnecessary".

We have had arguments about this, because I take the view that when I am sick, it is necessary. And completely involuntary. Plus, E. being mortal is occasionally prone to the same colds and flus that we all get from time to time, with the same side effects, so he's not exempted from emitting the odd death rattle of his own.

But I agree with him that it can be unpleasant to listen to the sounds of someone else's cold. There was one occasion we were on a transatlantic flight, and for six hours we had to hear the woman seated behind us as she gurgled and snottered the length of the Atlantic ocean. E.'s description was "snuffling like a piggy". He'd rather not be in a ten mile radius of that sound.

Since I am presently snuffling away myself in a similar swine-like fashion, I wonder therefore how the hell I am going to entice him to engage in the necessary baby making activities, which must occur this week.

Assuming I can even bring myself to contemplate the notion of getting frisky when all I want to do is lie on the sofa in my fuzzy slippers, watch crap telly and drink tea. Oink.

Bar Brawl

On Friday I did two very stupid things.

Firstly, I got paralytically drunk. This is not like me, and is especially not like me over the last year, when I have been, shall we say, mindful of moderating my alcohol intake. But I went straight from work on an empty stomach to a party. There I was plied with fizzy wine and more fizzy wine and then some red and on to the pub where I found myself imbibing vodka. Vodka! I swiftly crossed over from that feeling of being pleasantly merry to becoming quite plastered in very little time.

Somehow I managed to extract myself from that party before it got too silly, and go off to another one which had been scheduled the same night. Unfortunate. I usually avoid such things, but it was on the way home. So off I went, swaying and hiccuping mightily. As I was walking, I realised I was seeing double. S'blurry. Oops. Hic.

Arrived at the next party and attempted to sober up a bit. Difficult when bottles of chilled drinks are being placed in front of me. But I did my best, and managed to get it together somewhat.

One of the people at the gathering was a woman who I had worked with a couple years ago. She was presently on maternity leave, and so there was the inevitable cooing over the pictures of the bouncing ball of beautiful baby she had produced. I didn't mind that so much. But when I said wistfully (or slurred wistfully) that we had been trying unsuccesfully, the response was:

"Oh, I know. It took us two years. You know what the answer is...just chill. Stop writing things down."

At that point I took a renewed interest in the bottom of my bottle of alcopop. She proceeded to talk for the next half an hour about giving birth. By the time she finished rambling on about how the pain of breastfeeding was worse than her back labour, I was totally sozzled again .

For the rest of the night, when anyone asked me how I was, I replied "Infertile. And you?" This mightn't have been so bad, but it was several people from work, all of whom looked mildly horrified.

Finally, I spied a guy whom we shall call Craig. At this point I began the second stupid thing I would do this evening.

Rumour has it that Craig experienced some born-again type Road- to- Damascus conversion a year or so ago, and is now on the God Squad in a big way. I began asking him what, in retrospective, were a series of very intrusive questions about his faith.

So I quickly managed to ascertain that in Craig's world, things like infertility and cancer are caused by "sin". Hearing this, in my inebriated state was incitement to an intellectual bar brawl. Whose sin, I demanded to know? Are you implying that I am infertile because I have done something wrong?

No, according to Craig- it was because of the sin of the world. We now live in a fallen world tainted by the effects of sin. Things like infertility is one result of the human race's rebellion against God.

Riiiiight, so the world is a fucked up place, people are cruel, intolerant, and unkind. So that makes me, personally, unable to have children? That makes people get cancer?

It's all part of God's plan.

Was it God's plan to make you an asshole? Because that's what you sound like to me when you talk about attributing medical conditions to some amorphous notion of good and evil, to the idea that bad things happen to people as part of some grand design.

Well, in the afterlife, there will be no illness, no infertility- we will all live like happy bunnies in God's garden.

Great, so I can get pregnant when I am dead?

At that point I decided a little boogie break was in order- when reason fails, try disco. That was the end of my conversation on religion and infertility. The rest of the evening carried on rather uneventfully, apart from the fact I somehow ended up in the chippie eating a smoked sausage supper at one in the morning, but that's par for the course when you go on a bender here in Scotland.

Now, I should add a little postcript to this story. The first is that I appreciate religion is a "complicated issue". And I shouldn't lump people who subscribe to a belief system into one category. In some ways, it was inappropriate for me to accost Craig for his views on the matter. I didn't like what he had to say, but I aggressively initiated the conversation. In my dumb, drunk, hurting way, this was a form of lashing out. So, note to self, stay away from the booze at future work parties.

And this morning I learned that Craig's father died of cancer yesterday. If Craig can take some comfort in the idea that it was God's plan for that to happen, well, good for him. Good for him.

Infertility Island

A few days ago, the divine getupgrrl mentioned the feeling of being the last prisoner in the cell while others are pardoned.

This got me thinking about a particular image which I have been carrying around with me since my adventures in infertility began. It is not of a cell-block but of a large desert island.

The island is populated with some of the coolest, sassiest, smartest women in the world. There is a well established village, with an organised social structure- university, church, doctor's surgery, post office. There are also a number of outposts, where smaller groups live in tents or grass huts. Some women choose to live closer to the island interior on their own, emerging once in awhile when a passing ship is spotted.

There is a lookout tower, and this is usually manned by someone at all times. What are we looking for? The ferry, of course. This calls at the island dock on a regular basis. Quite often all the women on the island gather on the beach to watch the arrivals and departures.

Women whose time on the island is up, stroll up the ramp, clutching their boarding passes happily. Sometimes they blow kisses, and promise to write. A few do keep that promise, and their postcards and letters mounted on the bulletin board in the village hall.

The arrivals are usually a mixed bunch. Some step off the ferry with a bewildered look in their eye- like, "how the hell did I end up here? We were on our way to the Bahamas, and the next thing I knew I was on some damn island with a bunch of crazy girls." They spend a lot of time looking for the tourist information centre and asking when the next ferry is due.

Others are resigned to the fact of the detour, but confident their stay will be short. They prance down the gangplank, usually wearing a spangly bikini and clutching a dinky overnight bag. A few of the women observing on the beach look down at their own bikinis, once spangled, now frayed and faded. And the overnight bag has been long since washed away. They look at each other, raise eyebrows.

There are always a few who had a pretty good idea that a stopover on I.I. was inevitable. These women are toting gigantic backpacks, full of supplies. Mosquito repellant. Hammock. Battery powered fan. Pith helmet. Machete. Fishing rod. Guide book on how to build raft. We are glad to see these women, because they tend to be good in a crisis, and are always up for watchtower duty.

The saddest arrivals are those women to whom we once waved goodbye. We greet them with a hug, we wrap our arms around them to give comfort, and we escort them gently back to the guest quarters, where we try to ensure the beds are more comfortable and the air conditioning is on.

The ferry leaves at sunset. We watch as it steams away. And then we quietly disperse, making our way back up the length of the beach, back to the huts, the lagoon or the campfire.

All things considered, Infertility Island is not the worst place I have ever been. The weather can be variable, and the menu does tend to feature an awful lot of cake at times. But the company is undeniably excellent.

And if some days I walk the beach only to find my message in a bottle has washed back up on shore, well, I can but wait. Wait and watch for the ferry, which may one day take me home.