Getting off the Rollercoaster - Going for Adoption

"I can do it" . . and how one person's dream, is another's 'devastation'.

2009-02-09T20:26:00.003Z

From joining up a few bits of words to a whole, meaningful, and very life-affirming phrase! This is Theo's first phrase of more than 2 words (unless you count "good boy, mummy" which, actually, I don't!)

I am continuing to enjoy this. He really is a joy (as my MIL wrote to me today in an email).

Today an odd conversation at the mother/toddler group with a woman I'd not met before. She chatted freely about, after a life of nannying, how she now felt the need to decide if she was to continue with this, or re-train (possibly as a social worker) as her children were now 20 and 18, driving, having lives of their own etc. She is the same age as me.

She continued by talking about her friend, also 45, who had children at the same time as she did, and is now 'devastated' to find herself pregnant again. Doesn't know what to do. I think I managed to keep myself from looking too shocked - my mouth didn't actually drop open, though I did say she should tell her friend to have the baby, and I would adopt it! Oh how strange life really is. We talked rather non-comittally about older mothers - she is currently nannying for 4 children under 9, all born to an older mother, who also has a 21 year-old son. She mentioned that her mother and mother's mother [going back ad infinitum it would seem] had all been 40+ mothers, and began to muse on how she would feel if she found she were pregnant again. With hindsight, maybe she was looking to me for some insight, but I was just too generally gobsmacked to make much sense.

I do have a few hang ups about my age, and just in case anyone wants to know, and because I do need to face them, here are some . . .

I don't tell people my age any more. (45 - I guess I can tell you, though I still had to think twice.) I used to think being coy about your age was ridiculous but I have become ridiculous, it seems. I feel stupid to worry that other people will judge me but it does worry me that they will.
I spend a stupid amount of time calculating how old I will be when Theo is 16 / 18 / 30 etc. How old he is likely to be when he loses his mother (my own mother has just turned 88, so there is hope that I may reach a good age, except that I have been a little less clean-living, I fear).
I also spend time thinking of how old my children would have been if I had had them at a 'normal' age. Related to this, I also wonder if I would actually have been fertile back then, or if the miscarriage problem would have raised its head anyway.
I have a desire to seek out other mothers who are at least in their 40s - or, bizarrely, who just look as if they are!
I often forget that I am not just over 40 - I am 5 years over 40. Just over 5 years away from 50. I can barely bear to write that!

I think I have issues here! Fitness, strength and health are key, and perhaps some self respect wouldn't go amiss. I know I was very conscious of having an older mother when I was growing up, and I do wish I wasn't doing this to another child . . . but there are worse things, after all.

A birthday

2009-02-02T21:14:00.002Z

Theo is two years old and he had a 'white' birthday - a good fall of snow overnight gave us a new dimension to playing outdoors. I always think snow is so magical, but I'm not sure he was all that impressed - it wasn't thick enough to make snowmen or go sledging, but I am hoping that tonight's fall will give us that bit extra that we need for tomorrow! His first snow and the end of his second year. Nine months with us.

I made dinner for R's parents and we had a big chocolate cake with candles on it. Absurdly I made Sachertorte - but worth the effort - it was SO beautiful, with his name piped on it. Very sophisticated indeed for a 2-year-old! When we had all eaten a lump I remembered I had forgotten to photograph it, so it will have to be one that we just store in our memories (and arteries!)

My life is mostly very, very happy. It is odd to think that there are 'people out there' who know Theo from before we met him who may be thinking of him today. In a way, I hope they are. He had a card from his foster family, still using the nickname for him that we dropped, which just grates a little. I think I am not perfectly magnanimous.

In the meantime also Theo was diagnosed with a heart murmur. The GP who heard it first drove me crazy with his attitude. Eventually we had an appointment with a paediatric consultant who tried to assure me that there was no reason to worry and no need for a scan. I am not quite satisfied but we'll see. I am also not quite ready to become Mother From Hell at our local surgery (though quite capable of doing so, should I think it necessary!)

My lovely Canadian SIL gave me some advice: "Be a bear with him" - she is bringing up a child with lots of issues - he is "on the autistic spectrum" and has had to deal with all sorts of rubbish. So she knows how to stand up for what is needed for her child.

I am now in the process of trying to decide whether or not to return to work in June. So many pros and cons, but it will have to be another post, probably not tomorrow!

A strange date

2008-12-08T20:11:00.002Z

Tomorrow is our final hearing, and we are invited to bring family and friends and a camera to "this happy occasion" !
I don't know quite what to expect, but we have invited three friends and R's parents (mine are too far away to travel for what is likely to be a 45 minute hearing).
What is really weird is the date. When we got married we chose to do it on John Lennon's birthday. Tomorrow is the anniversary of his death. I never thought it would be a date I would celebrate. How strange life is!

Nearly there

2008-11-13T12:49:00.003Z

The court case was heard this morning and I have just picked up the message from Theo's SW to say that the adoption order has been granted. One step closer.
It's a bit confusing and long-winded, but in April he was granted a Placement Order, which meant he could be placed for adoption. This hearing means he can now be adopted (whatever) and we will shortly know when the final Final Hearing is which will grant us the adoption. That's the one we take the champagne to. For reasons (below) I am not feeling as elated as maybe I should be, but I am glad this hearing is over.

In other news I am in pieces (crying uncontrollably while Theo has been sleeping) about poor, poor 'B@by P' who was tortured and finally killed by his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger. It totally beggars belief that all the different authorities which visited this child (60 times we are told) entirely failed him. I made the mistake of listening to a national phone-in programme as we drove home from shopping today. Normally I have a huge amount of sympathy for the difficulties faced by social services, and how easy it is to blame them when they get it wrong either way, but what the hell was going on - and HOW can the leader of that department not think that she needs to resign? It makes no difference to the child now I suppose, but though I am not a religious person, even I know that that poor b@by has gone to a better place. I cannot possibly write here any details of what he went through, but I am sure Google will help you out if you need to know, and don't know already. My heart breaks for him. I can't write anymore, I am losing the fight against the tears again.

Disgruntled (and old)

2008-10-29T21:07:00.003Z

It turns out that it isn't a Final Hearing after all (although it does say that on the letter from the court, so silly me for taking them so literally). No, this is just the Birth Parents' FINAL chance to make a case for them to have him back. Our final hearing, when they get to tell us we can keep him, will 'hopefully' be within a couple of weeks of their final hearing.
Oh how crap. Really.
I just want this over and sorted.

In the meantime I spend my time being paranoid about being an older mother, and wondering if I should just blog older mothering stuff. I could bore for England on the subject. And, just for laughs, a bit of me has also not quite given up hope of a younger brother or sister for Theo. (Hollow laughs here please. I really am not kidding anyone.)

I did actually discuss the possibility of adopting again with KT (my SW), but even I could see that there are all sorts of things to consider - some directly because he is who he is, and others under a general heading of 'other factors'. For example, and in no particular order:

Theo is just the most charming, smiley, gorgeous child - SO easy to love - I would worry that a second one may not be so loveable.
Theo needs to feel 100% secure with us, which means the timing of a second child would be critical - on the one hand said sibling would need to be 2 years younger (this is SS rule, apparently) AND not introduced just as Theo starts school for example.
If I feel such an old mother already, and Theo was born when I was 43, how am I going to feel about being a mother to a child born when I was 45 - 46?
A second very young child may be difficult to find and difficult to allocate to such ageing parents.
If we had a second child we would almost certainly have to look at moving house at some point - which would be a shame (we love where we live) and financially pretty problematic.
Theo is an incredibly sociable child - and he really does attract other children so that I genuinely believe he will always have lots of friends, which would certainly mitigate against being an only child.
He does already have a half sister and half brother, but as he will not be growing up with any contact with them, this really doesn't seem very relevant - and of course they will never share his relationship with us, which is kind of the point.

There is loads of stuff that has been floating around my head; I sometimes wish still that I were more articulate, more dedicated as a blogger and could record all these things.

In the event of my personality NOT changing, however, I shall just record here that Theo has started imitating lots of words now, and said another child's name last Friday (he did say a horse's name before that, but not sure that counts!) The child is Ali, (Alastair) - the horse 'Poppy'.

And finally, if I were not disgruntled, would I just be gruntled?

A date for the diary

2008-10-20T21:30:00.002+01:00

On 13 November 2008 at 10.00am we have our 'final hearing' which is (supposedly) a formality, and from what we understand is held as an adoption celebration. To be honest, from the correspondence we received today, it didn't feel like that. It is very clinical, and states that should the birth parents wish to oppose the adoption they must provide evidence of a change in lifestyle and are urged to seek legal representation as a matter of urgency. Of course, the understanding from all the evidence that has been submitted so far is that it will go forward unopposed, but there is always a tiny chance I suppose . . .

The hearing takes place at a court in a city which is not where we live, but not too far . . . bizarrely we were advised to use a court away from home so as to throw the birth parents off the scent, so to speak. Any documentation sent to the birth parents from the court is anonymised, so that we are not traceable. All a bit cloak and dagger, but bearing in mind their lifestyles, it's probably just as well.

R has suggested that we pretty much keep it to ourselves until it is done and dusted. Really, with all the preparation and the numerous meetings we have had with SWs, I genuinely do not believe a problem will arise at this stage. But I do agree with R - let's not set ourselves up here. (Like we aren't already committed!) Can you imagine - to make a decision against us would involve Theo in unimaginable pain - quite apart from any consideration of us. No, no, no, no, no.

And this month I have also elected to do the 'letterbox' letter, which goes via social services to members of Theo's family. I will write a letter to his half brother (age 11), half sister (age 3) and aunt (mother's half sister) who have all expressed a wish to hear news of him on an annual basis. I am sure it will get easier, but they are not easy letters to write.

Just at the moment I am tired, and being perfect mum is hard; I know I don't have to be, but I want to so desperately. He deserves it.

A day in the life . . .

2008-10-08T21:34:00.004+01:00

It's been a long time since I left anything here - but here (left) is a tribute to our great British summer 2008!

I am less of a brain person these days, more the domestic goddess-in-training - and frankly not all that promising! Here is a rough summary of my day:
got up when child woke up (just before 7am) - pulled child from cot; changed nappy
watched a bit of TV (Tweenies, Boo and Bob the Builder - recommended only for the under 2's or the completely brain dead)
Had a shower while child watched Boo! (so inane, but he loves it)
Dressed child. Very cute rugby shirt and trousers.
Dressed Mummy. Not very cute - off-white ancient bra*, fleece and jeans.
Fed child smoothie and weetabix. Child rejected weetabix. Fed child some of own smoothie too.
Fed the cats
Mummy a bit hungry.
Put a large saucepan of chickpeas on to cook for meal later - had remembered to presoak them! Hurrah!
Greeted builders (currently having a conservatory built - can't wait till it's finished!) - made them coffee and gave them a plate of flapjacks, cooked previous evening (extra DG points)
Managed a cup of tea for mummy.
. . . and a flapjack, as still hungry.
Played a bit with child - rocked on rocking Moosie; "read" some books, bumped on the stairs, bashed a shape sorter for a while.
Changed pooey nappy of protesting, kicking child.
Drove into town - bought vegetable bouillon powder, toothpaste, fruit, 3 birthday cards, 1 birthday present. Ate samples of fudge in card shop - 2 pieces actually - both shared with Theo.
Bumped into the husband of a friend, whom I (embarrassingly) didn't immediately recognise. Problem = his child wasn't with him, therefore I assumed it must just be some speccy weirdo smiling at me.
Walked across park - went on swings, seesaw, slide, swings, slide, swings. Played with the gate. A lot.
Drove home - Theo failed to fall asleep in the car for late morning nap. Slightly frustrating!
Cooked Theo's lunch - eggy bread (French toast to the posh) - most of this also rejected, but yogurt went down easily.
After nappy change went for a short drive for the sole purpose of persuading the boy to nap. (It worked - heaven! Transferred sleeping child successfully from car to bed upstairs, set baby monitor and retired.)
Theo slept while I emptied dishwasher and re-stacked, cleared general debris in kitchen, tidied toys, brought in washing and (shock) read a chapter of my book.
FORGOT TO HAVE A CUP OF TEA WHILE I HAD THE CHANCE! IDIOT!
When he awoke I changed his nappy, gave him some juice, and we played outdoors - push-along car up and down the lane, fed windfall apples to the horses, climbed up and down the front steps, blew up the beach-ball again, shouted excitedly at cows and chased the cat a bit.
Tried to stay clear of the wet concrete in the back garden - the footing for our new conservatory.
Finally, late afternoon and husband returns from hard day at the office. Hand over boy leaving me free to cook dinner.
Chick pea and spinach gratin for mummy and daddy. Pasta bake (frozen from previous leftovers) with additional tuna and cheese for boy.
Boy and husband come in one hour later - dinner is served. (Well, very close-to!)
Daddy baths boy. Mummy helps catch him after to dry, moisturise and wrap for bed.
Straight after The Archers lie on bed with boy until he falls asleep. Transfer beautiful sleeping baby to cot and creep from room.
Watch a rather poor film on DVD (Catch and Release - not sure what made me choose it, but I certainly didn't think very much of it).
After film creep back into bedroom to go to bed.
*it defies belief, I know, but this bra is actually the one I wore to run the London Marathon in 2001. Yes, honestly. What does this say about me?

The point of all that is, I suppose, my day-to-day life is inane, even monotonous in its minutia. Still, it would be wrong to think that I mind because in the grand scheme of things I feel it has purpose and meaning - pretty much as never before, which is amazing. Right at the centre of it is this little boy who doesn't yet understand what it means to be adopted, what his birth parents were like, how he has ended up here. I consider the issues daily, and feel the injustice of having to burst the beautiful, happy bubble he lives in. I worry that I will get it wrong and make it more painful than it needs to be somehow. But I am so glad and grateful to have him. I think I may end up as one of those people whose only regret was 'not having more children'. But I never knew it would be like this - that I would be like this.

. . .with Nanna (my mum)

2008-08-13T10:02:00.003+01:00

Yes, I am the muppet that held the camera the wrong way round to start with, but as my mum is now 87, and suffering dementia, I thought this one was worth keeping anyway. She adores him!

One hundred

2008-07-29T19:59:00.003+01:00

According to my blogger dashboard, I have written 99 posts so far - which makes this number 100. I should probably think of something momentous to mention here, but there isn't really anything. I would really like this to be a more regular record of Things Theo Does and some of the emotional ups and downs of the experience. But I am really a bit of a rubbish blogger - not regular enough and not very articulate. Which is a shame, but I need to realise that's not just going to magically change.

In four days Theo will be 18 months old - and we will have had him for 3 months.
I was looking at a video clip that I had made during our 'introductory' week at the end of April, and he looked so much younger than now - more like a baby. He is becoming so fabulously expressive. He will make animal noises and responds SO enthusiastically to the question 'what does a cow say?' with a big smile and a loud MOOO!

Also he understands so much - I can ask him to put something back, or fetch me a nappy, pass me the shampoo, or sit down on a cushion, or a whole host of other things. I think with the change from the foster family to us there was a 'transition' period while he got used to the way we talk and what we call things (it's amazing how differently people can express exactly the same thing - 'Shall mummy get you a nice drink?' or 'Would you like some juice darling' - both mean essentially the same thing, but just shows how much they have to learn!) I am sure there are LOADS of simple phrases he was used to that he will have had to relearn. He has suddenly just leapt forward in terms of confidence and comprehension - and will soon be talking a lot. At the moment he has:

Bye bye
Boo
mooo / baaa / neigh / quack quack / miaow
Mummy (REALLY clear - he says this the moment he wakes up in the morning, and then about 50 times a day!)
Daddy (Also really clear, and mixed liberally throughout, but he definitely knows who daddy is!)
book
OK
Two (oddly - if I am counting he joins in for 'two' but none of the other numbers)
Gen! (for again / more)

Plus there is loads of other stuff which he repeats ('goway!' for example, but not in a context where it could mean 'go away') which clearly mean something to him, but Mummy has yet to decipher!

There is also, unfortunately, a few things he absolutely does NOT understand, which can cause some grief - 'Be gentle with the kitten' , 'Don't throw that book/toy/cup'.

Tomorrow I have visits from Theo's SW and from my own, KT. KT is lovely, and the other one is fine too, so it won't be bad. Everyone is always so positive about this placement. I am even looking forward to them seeing Theo again, and seeing how happy and confident he is.
Proud Mummy.

In the meantime we have applied for the court forms to finalise the legal process. The court is being PAINFULLY inefficient, which is awful, because it means I will have to call them for a fourth time to try and persuade them to put some forms in an envelope and send them to me. How hard can it be?

Six / Seven / Eight

2008-07-07T21:42:00.002+01:00

The date of my first birthday as a mother. Wow.

I had a lovely, lovely day. Theo is best in familiar surroundings with people he knows well, so DH and I simply took him in his pushchair a mile down the lane to a country pub where we could eat after playing with Theo in the puddles (oh - he got VERY wet!) and on the lawn with his ball.

Theo was sweetness and light, he sat happily strapped into a booster seat eating marmite sandwiches and various other favourites while we ate Sunday roasts. We took about an hour to walk the mile back, stopping for puddles and totally "going with the (Theo) flow". He had a lovely time - ergo, so did we.

In the evening instead of the posh meal that DH had planned to cook for me we found we were not so very hungry and ate leftover reheated veggie lasagne in front of the Wimbledon men's final on TV. The result was what I'd hoped for, though I could barely watch after the fourth set went to Federer!

All my birthday wishes have come true.

In which I speak sternly to myself . . .

2008-06-30T20:31:00.003+01:00

Yes, Theo has had some knocks, but he left a very bad home situation aged just 6 weeks.
He will be fine.
It will, however, take TIME.
Have some PATIENCE!
I know this has never been strongest suit, but really, nothing can change in such a short time, and there is SO MUCH TIME to come.

PS This is all worth it, because the most beautiful sound in the whole world is Theo laughing - which he does frequently.

Trying too hard

2008-06-19T21:14:00.003+01:00

When Theo was born he spent 4 weeks in NICU, recovering from his BM's drug habit. Now, I don't have any personal experience of withdrawing from class A drugs, but my guess is there is some considerable pain involved. Theo was a tiny baby, and couldn't possibly understand why he was suffering like this. In addition, there was no ever-present mummy to comfort him when he cried. He would have learnt pretty early on that pain is part of life, and that there is not much comfort offered by grown-ups.
He has had a few hard lessons.

He has developed a few strategies that make sense to him, but break my heart.

If I try and hold him if he is hurt or simply tired, he rarely allows it. He wails and wails, works himself up into a real state and struggles free - then he lies on the floor with his head down, his hands round his face. It's a 'leave me alone, I do this alone' pose.

I am trying soooo hard to help him to trust me. I know it will be a long process, but I need to be there, pick him up each time he falls, (prevent the fall even!), anticipate his every need, wish, frustration. Over time I need him to learn that I am reliable, will love him, will control his world and make it safe for him, that I will look after him, and he doesn't need to.

Some of this is a little different to what I might have been doing with a 16 month old birth child, and not many people understand what the issues are.

But this evening, after he had gone to bed, I cried buckets to R. I am exhausting myself but I can't put less into this relationship with Theo. I love him so much, it's physical. I feel so extraordinarily fiercely protective, but he has already been hurt - and I want SO MUCH to make him better.

One day I will write a post in praise of my fabulous social worker, KT. In the meantime, I will just leave you with her wise thoughts, which at least mean that someone understands the gap that I am trying so hard to fill. The thing is, Theo seems so incredibly normal, and is such a happy, sociable, bright and generally gorgeous child. But KT can see what I mean, and she said he wil be happy and secure, because I love him and that she absolutely believes he will be the best he can be. But she also said I need to realise he will never be the person he would have been if I had been his birth mother. Of course he won't - how could he be after what he has been through? I do know that.

How can I ever make it up to him?

6 weeks

2008-06-13T21:02:00.002+01:00

Tomorrow we meet up with Theo's ex foster family again - just for an hour or so. We will meet at a park - neutral ground. The idea behind this is that Theo should not feel as though the family simply disappeared without trace, fell off the edge of the earth . . .

When we originally arranged it I didn't really think twice - I thought it would be a good idea. And now I am not so sure. OK - an older child might be reassured. He is just 16 months. Will he remember them? Assuming he does, how will it make him feel to meet them again, and then be parted from them once more? Will he understand that this is a reassurance meeting, done for his benefit? Or will he just be more confused, unsettled by the whole thing?

I have decided not to object if they want to pick him up, call him by their pet name for him (which we don't use), kiss him, cuddle him and so on. I don't feel threatened by them - though I think I did at first, when Theo was still so new. I know that the foster parents will be fine - they are straightforward, practical people; their teenage son, also, is unlikely to get over-emotional. But the teenage girl, almost at the end of her GCSE exams, is a potential wild card. But it's only a short meeting, and we never have to do this again.

I'm feeling like this is something we are doing for the foster family which is NOT THE POINT AT ALL. I am not looking forward to it for myself, but mostly I am worried on my little one's behalf.

Theo just woke, screaming, and inconsolable, which has NEVER happened before. It took me a few minutes just to wake him up enough to be able to calm him. Once he was properly awake he immediately calmed down, drank some milk, and went easily back to sleep. Thank heavens it was tonight and not tomorrow, though, or I would have been convinced that the meeting was the cause of unsettling him. Poor little bean, it made me cry to see him so distressed.

Here he is

2008-06-02T23:27:00.005+01:00

Couldn't resist, but will remove these soon!

Will post more when I have found a way of making time!

SORRY - NOTHING TO SEE HERE!

How we brought him home

2008-05-10T20:26:00.003+01:00

Right up until really close to it actually taking place I was unsure about timescales and the actual nuts and bolts of what they call 'transferring' a child, so I thought it might be of interest to record it here. Also, of course, for me looking back at how I felt, I wanted to blog on various days during the transfer, but found myself exhausted or simply out of time in the day.
We initially had a meeting during which the timetable was put together with the following members of Social Services:
Head Honcho of Children's Services
Our SW, KT (whom I love more and more - she has become such a fantastic support)
Theo's SW (a young woman in her mid 20s)
SW for Theo's foster mother.
Also present at the meeting were me and R, and Theo's foster mother - I will call her Andrea.

The plan that emerged . . .

Thursday April 24
9.00am: R and I to Andrea's house to meet Theo. We stay about an hour and a half. 2 SWs also present for this first meeting.

Friday April 25
A day's 'grace' in case we decide after all this that we don't feel a connexion with Theo, and want to pull out.

Saturday April 26
1.30pm: R and I to Andrea's house staying until about 4pm, Theo's tea time.

Sunday April 27
8am: R and I to Andrea's house to participate in Theo's morning routine. Give him breakfast and lunch and leave shortly after midday.
4pm: Return to give Theo tea and spend the rest of the afternoon there until about 6pm.

Monday April 28
9.00am - Me to Andrea's and go out together (me Andrea and Theo - plus her 2-yr-old foster daughter) in my car on a shopping trip to the supermarket.
12.00pm - Return to Andrea's for lunch, meeting R there. Me and R spend the afternoon at Andrea's house playing with Theo, while Andrea is absent from the house and takes foster daughter for a walk. Give Theo tea at 4pm and leave.
(At this point I started to have a problem with the process that, stupidly I had simply not forseen. I HATED leaving him - especially when I felt that we were beginning to form a bond, and knew that Andrea would be out with him at various places where he was handed around for cuddles with anybody. And nightimes I would wake up and MISS him being there. Monday was the low-point for me - the process seemed so flawed, Theo chose to run to Andrea on one occasion when he bumped his head and hurt himself. I know it was silly, but I was hurt. I phoned KT, who was superb and told me how everything I was experiencing was normal. She also made it clear that there were certain aspects of the week which, in her view, were not being best handled. It helped me to know she understood and very much agreed with the main issues I had.)

Tuesday April 29
7.30am: Me to Andrea's to do 'morning routine', joined at 9.00am by R. R and I take Theo out together (we went to a little playground with swings and a climbing frame, which he LOVED) and then gave him lunch (prepared in advance, and we took him into Starbucks - which was a riot!)
1.00pm: We collect Andrea from her home so that she can accompany Theo on his first trip to our house. He spends about an hour and a half at our house, exploring and playing with a few familiar toys. We all return to Andrea's for Theo's tea at 4pm.

Wednesday April 30
8.30am: R and I to Andrea's, pick up Theo to spend the day at our house, returning him for 4pm.

Thursday May 1
10.30 / 11.00 am: R and I collect Theo from Andrea's returning him around 6.30 / 7pm for us to bath him and put him to bed. (This was traumatic, as he had had quite a stimulating and exciting day with us and did NOT want to go to bed! Hence tears - both mine and his!)

Friday May 2
"Move Day" R and I to collect Theo and take him home. KT present. "Handover to be kept short". It took about 45 minutes, and Andrea's teenage children had taken the morning off school to be there, so emotions were higher than they really should have been, but we took him home.

That was the nuts and bolts of it, anyway.

A different reason to cry

2008-05-05T20:27:00.002+01:00

My little boy has just fallen asleep in his cot at last - it's taken well over an hour, and tears from him and tears from me.
As planned, we spent nearly a week of "introductions" until the big day on Friday when we brought him home, with it gradually dawning on us that not only was he about to spend the night with us, he was actually about to spend the next 16+ years with us.
I worried that in his new surroundings he may not sleep well. We brought the mattress and bedding, unwashed, from his foster home and put it in his cot here. We followed his evening routine to the letter, though of course his bath was our bath, not his usual, his surroundings entirely different. He had had plenty of time to play here, to eat here, to explore; he'd had naps here and seemed relaxed and 'at home' - but of course sleeping overnight was going to be the biggie.
We congratulated ourselves on an uneventful first night. I sang him to sleep as he lay on my tummy, his head on my chest. It was like a dream. He slept, just stirring with a whimper every hour or so. Because I sleep lightly I got up to check every time, covered him again with his blanket, but he didn't wake up till morning.
Second night, same thing.
Last night, I don't know quite what happened but he just seemed unable to relax physically. He showed every sign of wanting to sleep, he yawned, rubbed his eyes, but even when he did fall asleep he would waken himself by crying loudly in his sleep, still in my arms. Eventually he fell asleep in R's arms, we put him in his cot and he slept unusually peacefully all night.
Tonight, hoping to avoid the pattern from last night, R offered to put him down. Nope, Theo apparently just kept coming to the top stair gate and calling 'mama' until R gave up. So I tried. Pretty much everything.
I sang to him.
I rocked him.
I talked to him.
I undressed him and me and rocked him skin-to-skin.
I put him in his cot and stayed with him.
I put him in his cot and left him, though he cried. (Not recommended. This is the bit that made me cry. I cannot listen to a baby crying for me, when I could go to him. How do people do this?)
Eventually I put him in his cot and spoke firmly to him as he tried to play 'boo' with me, using his topsheet. I said "Goodnight, darling, see you in the morning" and left the room.
(He is so gorgeous). He fell asleep that time. But I feel that I don't know what I am doing.

R has 2 weeks paternity, and doesn't go back to work until 19 May, but I wonder what it will be like when he does go back. I am so tired.

He is, however, in spite of the above, the easiest, loveliest, most adorable child you could imagine.
He smiles and giggles and (mostly) eats anything. He dances to any music that comes on the radio, he looks like an angel. He is SO bright and learns so quickly.
We laugh that we fed him asparagus risotto.
He came to us with a collection of ghastly plastic toys with batteries, flashing lights and american accents (no offence, but we don't live in America). We are introducing him to nice middle-class wooden toys, and giving him loads of one-to-one.
Sometimes we play him classical music. He hears Pink Floyd and David Bowie. (Kooks - great song for our situation - look up the lyrics on google!)

I think I am doing this all wrong. I think I am trying too hard, and wearing us both out.

Please don't tell me to leave him to cry on his own in a room. I can't bear to think I would do that. I didn't wait all this time to become a mother to leave a baby to cry with no comfort and no love.

Very disjointed post.
I am in love with this child, he is completely incredible, he is more beautiful and clever and adorable than I would ever have imagined. But it is not a bed of roses. Who knew? (!)

Silly me.

The panel, they say 'YES'

2008-04-21T17:50:00.003+01:00

Says it all really, what more do I need to say?
It is a very daunting experience, to be interviewed for the job of adoptive parent, to sit in front of 12 or so people and have them make a completely life-changing decision - or at least sanction that decision.

But they were so positive. They asked how we felt when we saw the video of Theo (I have settled on Theo as a name for him here, it feels right) - and I said that I felt it made everything very real, and also made me want to pick Theo up and cuddle him (which was true). The right answer I think! How would we adapt our lifestyle to involve him in all our outdoor stuff? We told them about the baby carrier for the bike, the baby-rucksack carrier, the paddling pool (for when it gets warmer) the sand pit - we waxed enthusiastic about all the things we have planned. They smiled and made notes. And finally, how would we approach his life story? I spoke from the heart about his loss, and how I felt the need not just to help him understand about the circumstances that he has come from, but also the need to make it OK for him. I know enough now about his birth parents that I truly believe they love him, and would love to bring him up - they are just not in a place to do that. He has suffered such losses already. I do understand loss.

Just at the moment, strange as it may sound, I wouldn't change a thing. This is right, and I feel very peaceful. Not literally - things are quite chaotic what with planning, buying, painting, rushing, explaining. But inside I feel quite profoundly peaceful.

On Thursday we will meet Theo for the first time. At the weekend we will start the process of transferring him from his current foster carers to us. It will take about a week to ten days. We expect to have him home with us at the beginning of May.

PS - forgot to say again how old he is - he is 14 months old. He is just walking. He is really a gorgeous baby - it is getting to be funny that everyone who has had personal contact with him uses the same word - gorgeous.

Bad news and good.

2008-04-11T17:59:00.004+01:00

Apologies if anyone has been checking here for non-existent updates. Things have moved on, and in some ways I have been so caught up it has been hard to post.

Firstly I have to say, part of the lack of post was because I wanted to blog a poetic, beautiful post about my babycat, Delia, whom I loved SO much, and who was hit and killed by a car last week, while we were on holiday. Not so unusual, I suppose, but we live in a house where maybe 10 -20 cars pass in 24 hours. And both cats vanish at the sound of one, so I can't imagine what happened, but my return from holiday was marked by the saddest, saddest cat burial. My neighbour had found her and wrapped her in a fleece blanket and placed her in a cat basket so we could bury her [and cuddle her lifeless body] on our return. Truly, if tears could have brought her back, she would be here now. Dear Delia. I loved you for your faults, and in spite of them, for your cuddly, soft warm fur, big round eyes, because you could open doors, because you found a place to sleep on top of the wardrobe in our room, because you would eat marmite on toast and sultanas from my fruit cake. I could go on, but I can't without making myself too sad again.

So on to the good news.
I don't have a name for him for here, yet, but he is GORGEOUS. The placement order has been granted (though a day later than planned, which kept stress levels higher than necessary) and we have since met with his sw, who has given us the green light. A four hour meeting (yes, really) but a good result, and we even got to see a video of him, and I have a photo in my bag.

Honestly, for obvious reasons I can't post a picture, but he is smiley, eats like a horse and is into everything. I am already so in love. I worried that I might find bonding hard, but I know I won't. Finally I am allowed to feel this is OK. I am going to be a mummy, really soon.

On 21st April we go to matching panel, and something would have to go seriously wrong at this stage for things to founder now. Then we have a planning meeting later that week, in which we decide the timetable for handing him over to us. Handover is a long-ish process (1-2 weeks) so as to minimise the trauma for him, though of course it will be hard for him. We will meet him for the first time, and have 24 hours to reflect in case we want to change our minds (very fair to build this in, but I don't think we will need it).

After the first meeting the process is: watch, join-in, do. For example we watch him fed, join in feeding him and then feed him ourselves - so that he gets used to the transfer of care-giving. Likewise bathing, putting to bed, getting up, etc etc etc. We do this over the period, gradually taking over each aspect of his daily routine from his foster family. I could write reams about the loss involved in his short life so far, and in those of the people around him, but I am continuing to work that through, and at base I feel sure that the plan for him is truly in his best interests. He was not removed from his birth parents for anything other than his best interests.

I have also struggled with the whole idea of being an older mother, but managed to come to terms with that, to a large extent anyway. I do believe I will be a better mother now than I would have 20 or even 15 years ago. 5 or 10 years ago would have been good, but life doesn't always work out that way, does it?
So. It is really happening.
I am going to be a mummy.
And thank heavens I live in the UK - I get a year off work - OK, 6 months is unpaid, but I will have TIME with my son.

My son. Wow. That's a weird thing to write.

Calmer but no closer

2008-03-28T13:26:00.002Z

Well, the intervening 10 days have been good for me. I have calmed down a lot, and [dare I say it?] I am even beginning to look forward to bringing this little boy home.

So how on earth did I get here?

To begin with (and to some extent still) I could simply think OF NOTHING ELSE. I found myself in tears in the car just from the stress of having to live and even function alongside this constant banging of questions in my head.

I spent time on the phone to two very good friends. One is a GP and has friends and contacts who are paediatricians and similar experts. The other is such a good friend that she spent ages googling for me and also has friends who work with addicts. They both came back to me with their findings, plus lots of love and compassion (for me this time) and it was a HUGE help.

There is more to come in, but the general feeling is that . . . well things could be a lot worse. Surprisingly (I thought) the drug is not actually all that damaging in itself – it’s the addiction itself that does so much damage and leads its victims into the desperate lives of stealing and dropping out. I need to get answers to lots of questions – it’s unlikely, for example that the birth mother swore off alcohol and other drugs, which could have been more dangerous . . . I need to find out about the baby’s experiences during withdrawal, about his current development etc etc – but I am feeling considerably more optimistic.

So I had some good friends, some good advice, and should have been feeling a lot better, when I realised that there was more to my panic. In brief: I will be stopping work, for at least a year, possibly more. As a couple we will lose nearly half our income, but have a lot more to spend our money on. I haven’t ever brought up a child before. What if I don’t know what to do? What if I don’t bond? What if after 3 months I realise I don’t want this? What if just doing this is the WRONG THING?

I was so angry with myself too, because I thought I had just realised, after this whole journey, that I don’t want to have a child at all. Not the case. Just nerves as the prospect of my wishes fulfilled approaches. . . at least I think so!

And now I think I am back on track – although if the placement order is not granted on the third, I will probably have a breakdown. But bizarrely, in spite of myself and my general predisposition for being over-excitable and fairly impatient, I am feeling reasonably calm.

I think this will work out, but if it doesn’t I think I will cope.

Famous last words?!

PS Excuse the rather crappy name change – I just need to make myself a little more anonymous to RL people, and while I realise this is not exactly high security, it doesn’t involve setting up either a whole new blog, or making it ‘inviteds’ only, which seems a little extreme and exclusive, which I have never claimed to be!

The space between anger and compassion and just walking away . . .

2008-03-18T20:40:00.002Z

I wish I could express all the stuff that I would like to be able to say, but I fear I shall not manage to.
My head is actually spinning (well, not actually, but it feels like it is inside at least).

Where to start?

When we talked to KT yesterday I was full of compassion, genuine, heartfelt sorrow for a fellow human woman who is unable to sort her life, to even the smallest extent. She has 3 children, all different fathers. All are being looked after, by family members, or by the state. She has been in hospital, with 'significant injuries' inflicted by the father of one of her children. She has spent time in prison for drug-related crime (stealing, presumably) where she apparently does well, as there is a structure and there are rules. She has been so UNLUCKY. A disorganised, unloving home which left her with a chasm where the love of a mother should be. Presumably male role-models who were violent, leaving her to chose similar types herself. A lack of any type of self-worth to prevent her from falling into the destruction of the addiction that has taken choices and value out of her life. And is now taking her children. Honestly, it breaks my heart.

On the other hand R and I are so well off. I have a home, a good, interesting job, a lovely relationship, I have friends, family, food, car - actually I have everything I need - and much more. I have no children, through some odd twist of fate, but because I am who I am there is a good chance I can even sort that out, and bring up children that the state considers better off in my care than in their own birth-family's. I am LUCKY.

That was the starting position, but before you label me Mother Theresa, let me tell you about how angry I am too.

This little baby was born add*cted to h*roin for god's sake! WHAT SORT OF A HUMAN BEING TAKES H*ROIN WHEN THEY ARE F****** PREGNANT! There is one rule about what you do with your own life, but there must surely be another when it comes to your own unborn child's life.

I worked it out. My sixth miscarriage (relatively well documented if you happened to want to read about the misery) happened in June 2006 - if that 'baby' that obviously never was had not become another of my miscarriages, it would have been born at roughly the same time as this add*cted baby was born. Where is the justice? I tried EVERYTHING I knew - I'd been to Harley Street, I was injecting heparin, taking steroids, progesterone pessaries, baby aspirin, I was desperate, DESPERATE to make my baby live. But as we know of course, it didn't. Meanwhile some b*tch out there shot up another potentially deadly fix, in spite of her unborn BABY! Even after the poor little mite was born, she went stealing to fund the drugs, drugs were top priority, even though it meant she would lose the right to keep the baby; sure enough, she went back into prison. Her baby taken into the care of the state - never mind the other two children.

There is no justice, I understand that. There is no baby because you did right, because you deserved it. Don't ever think that you had that baby because it was your right, your just reward for being so damn good. I can be good - I can assure you it doesn't work.

And now? Do I plan to be the good person who tries to put this unfortunate baby's life back on track? In spite of all the possible physical, drug-induced problems?

I don't know, I don't know yet.

There is so much more I could say, but it's for another day.

St Patrick's Day

2008-03-17T19:20:00.002Z

I have no affinity with St Patrick's day, but perhaps I will remember it in years to come.

KT was round today - I called her on Saturday to make sure she had received our 'flyer' - she had but needed us to change some bits, and when I called she suddenly said - "I need to see you urgently - can you and R make Monday, 12.30?"

Bonkers is just her middle name. As it happens we are both horrendously busy at work, but what are you going to do? Yep - drop everything and be there.

I wasn't expecting anything exciting, as I had called her. I didn't let myself think it might be 'news'. To be honest, I spent most of my time thinking 'what if they've discovered this blog' and worrying that the 'urgent' meeting was to tell me we had been struck off the potential adopters list for my indiscretions here - ever the optimist, you see. (Thank-you Beagle for the advice - I may well try and do that!)

But . . . there is a possible baby.
13 months, but as yet no adoption order - the court case is on 3rd April. And if the placement order is granted . . . we will almost certainly be matched. We could expect to bring our baby home for the very beginning of May, once we have been introduced etc etc.

2 things:

I am NOT getting excited. I can't. It's too much of a risk.
I would like to know more about the long term effects of having been born add*cted to h*roin. Such was this poor baby's start in life. Can anyone help? I am not having much luck with Dr Google.

A marketing challenge

2008-03-03T22:14:00.002Z

We are going national.
KT came around this morning, as promised.
As expected it was a no-news meeting.
She promises she is on the case, it's just that she is very keen to get us a very healthy child, who is also very young, which means that it will take a little time. And so far has not been long at all. (It just seems like a long time to us, but we are in a different time continuum, I believe.)

There has been some interest in us, no problems.
IF THERE IS ANY PROBLEM AT ALL, IT IS PROBABLY THAT YOU ARE A LITTLE OLDER.
I am surprised you didn't hear my scream from where you are.

I swear, if one more person suggests I am too old for this.

She had two questions that she wanted answers to. (Oops, I thought, here we go).
But they couldn't have been easier -
1. If a child were available at short notice, how soon would you be able to move on it (give up work)?
(A: As soon as you like. No problemo. This is the most important thing in the world to us - why would I let work get in the way?)

2. Have you got any holiday planned?
(A: Yes. We have a cottage booked in the Lakes for a week at the end of March - but hey, we would cancel in a heartbeat if there were the sniff of a child for us . . . we are simply not PLANNING any holiday that we couldn't easily cancel.)

Honestly, sometimes I wonder. Why would I go through years of trying to have a baby, then a not-that-much-fun home study etc etc and then book a holiday that I wasn't prepared to cancel, just when it may all be about to come together? Do I look stupid?

So - back to the main point, which DrSpouse touched on in her comment - having circulated our details around the 'consortium' we are now to make our own 'flyer' to circulate around the whole country. I didn't actually realise that this would be an option.

I work in marketing. Flyers are my bread and butter. I know how to make an emotional appeal, and a nice clear call to action. Supporting my copy with suitable photography.
But this one may be a bit of a challenge.
I don't know my market, my target audience, I don't know what buttons they want pushed.
What the HELL am I going to say?
How do I convince them that R and I are the perfect parents for some child out there?

Hey - wasn't something supposed to HAPPEN in February?

2008-02-28T20:26:00.003Z

Here's the email I wrote to KT last Friday.

Hello KT,

I hope you are well and enjoying the sunny weather (which will probably have turned to rain by the time you get this!)

As yet another friend announces she is pregnant, I thought I would just drop you a line to see how things are going, and let you know we are still here, and still trying to remain positive! R was so convinced something would happen in February, that I am just writing to check really.

Is there any progress at all or anything in the offing?

Would be good to hear from you

Love and best wishes,

Well, I had no reply on email, but was out last night and she called (weird that our SW always calls late in the evenings, can't understand that at all). R took the call and she said she was responding to my email so can she come round Monday 9am.

R agreed, but got no more information out of her, (it was a very short call) and as he didn't have me hissing at him, it is hard to know exactly whether she was cagey or simply businesslike. R says she was 'fairly upbeat' but gave nothing away. Who knows if there was anything to give away.

Isn't this crazy? Second-guessing a telephone call that I was not even present for? Honestly, it's like P-ingOAS a week before you're due.

But different. Obviously.

I am pretty sure it's all something of nothing - she is just responding to my email, and coming round for a catch-up, which will no-doubt be another round of reassuring 'wevenotforgottenyou' noises. Hoo-bloody-ray.

And in the meantime I have been getting quite tense. A sense of impending doom, along with plenty of general gloom is having a pretty good go at enveloping me. I am crying quite easily, but it's not healing, it's just painful.

And there are no fewer than 6 women I know and have regular contact with who are pregnant. Is this fair?

And out to dinner last night I sat next to a good friend (baby due May 6th) and opposite a colleague whose friend had a baby last year. The mother is back in work full time, the child (by all accounts) is turning into a clingy, spoilt brat and I had to listen to a discussion on the subject of 'having it all', staying home or going out to work once kids are on the scene. I must give out a lot of 'I am tough' vibes, because all of the women involved in this discussion KNOW about the adoption plans, and the miscarriages.

Me and my stupid brave face, eh. Roll on Monday - something to really cry about.

If only there were something to tell . . .

2008-02-15T20:01:00.003Z

It's been a long absence, but yes, I am still here.

Still nothing, and getting a bit frustrated. Actually, I saw a friend last week - I only see her maybe three or four times a year, and she was eager to know 'how it was going, how I was feeling' and I struggled to express it. Eventually I said, "I suppose I just don't really believe it is going to happen" and she looked really, really upset for me. And I just shrugged. It all just seems so far away, and I guess if/when there is finally reason to believe it, all the wheels will start turning, and I will be excited, but . . . I don't know. At the moment I have stupid amounts of work, and there have been some decisions that I am not happy with (it's hard to work on a project with your heart and soul, when you believe the project is fundamentally flawed) so I find myself wishing for the phonecall so that I could tell them all to get on with it on their own.

Revenge is not really a valid reason for adoption though, is it. And anyway, whatever reason I have at the moment, it's not going to make any difference.

Our fate (or our child) is not currently on our radar. How is this for Cheerful Thought Of the Week: At this very moment our future child may be undergoing some abuse or neglect at the hands of its 'real' parents. Or sitting in a foster home, awaiting an adoption order. Or just crying in his/her cot, because s/he is hungry and no-one cares enough.

So what does someone waiting to adopt go and see at the movies? Well, Juno of course. Loved it. Yes, really. Just because it is a lovely story, well acted and you change your mind about almost all of the characters in it. And that bit is great, and pretty rare in the movies. I am the worst person I know for having negative first impressions which turn out to be wrong - this film gives you negative and positive first impressions - and most of them turn out to be wrong. Good message. As for all the fuss about adoption law - well, the whole story is about a million miles away from what happens over here anyway, so it didn't really bother me at all. It is fiction, after all.

Dear Dino, thanks for missing me - I wonder if you did email me - the account that this links to is one I hardly ever access these days - but maybe I will go and have a look.

Years go by

2007-12-28T19:00:00.000Z

Christmas 2002
We wrote cute things on our Christmas cards to each other - little hints to say what we wished for the new year. In 03 we got engaged and gave up contraception. We were very excited. A baby - or at least a pregnancy in 2003!

Christmas 2003
Well, we had the pregnancy all right. Following a the shock of miscarrying in November (which I guess I put down to long-haul flights and bad luck) we were pretty sure we would have a baby the next year - the same year we got married. Being 8 months pregnant at the altar wouldn't be ideal - but we'd have lived with it! Perhaps the timing would work out better than that, but we would surely have our child in 2004.

Christmas 2004
2 more miscarriages, but I had a referral to a consultant at the hospital. I believed they would figure out the problem and we would have our child in 2005.

Christmas 2005
MIscarriages in July and October. Having gone from NHS to private clinics (and been written off at initial consultation as past my sell-by) we set ourselves a time limit. Off to Harley Street in the new year, but we had to cap the pain of the repeated losses. But I had long believed that the Harley Street doctor would sort me out. 2006 would see a baby for us at last.

Christmas 2006
We had stopped the efforts. Another miscarriage in June 06 while under the auspices of supposedly the UK RPL expert.
We started the adoption process with a phonecall in August, attended a training course in November, and really hoped that in 2007 we might actually be matched and next Christmas we would have our baby / toddler in 2007. . .

Christmas 2007
Of course, in the event our SW got sick, our approval was therefore delayed till October and then the match we nearly had fell through. A bit of a bruising really.
So still waiting on a match. I have no idea how long this will take, and this Christmas is truly shadowed by my grief and frustration and by feeling so much older. It's hard to believe that this time next year we will be buying presents for our baby / toddler . . . I just can't see it most days.

My apologies for a 'sorry for myself' sort of post especially at this time of year. I haven't given up hope, but I am struggling a bit at the moment. Wishing that all your wishes come true at last too . . . in 2008.

A big fat nothing

2007-12-13T21:32:00.000Z

Says it all really. Just in case you thought I was being silent because there was so much going on in my world in the way of ANYTHING happening on the adoption front - nope.
Nichts, nada, niente.
We moved a cot into our newly cleared out spare room 2 nights ago (a gift from a work colleague). We destroyed a pot plant en route - symbolically knocked a huge branch off the money tree! I had to smile.
Preparations for Christmas underway.
Just off to make gingerbread . . .

Lea-ving on a jet plane

2007-11-28T20:54:00.000Z

We are going away for a few days to see my friend in Spain. Not long, we will be back on Tuesday, but the break is well-timed.

It does remind me, however, that last time I went to see this friend in Spain I came back and discovered I was pregnant. For the first time . . . 4 years ago, almost exactly.

Today, because we were going away we decided we should phone KT just in case she was going to try and contact us while we were away (well, she might).

R managed to squeeze out of her that she has sent our Form F to another social worker.

This is good - something is happening, but I don't have too much information to obsess on.

Maybe something will happen.

Who knows?

Back next week.

I know (but so much still to learn)

2007-11-26T20:55:00.000Z

Why did they show me his face?
(A broad smile; a child charming the camera. Adorable.)
Why do I remember it?
Why do I see his smile still?

All those dates that I have banished. I have done so well. I do not mark a day out for grieving, because of ‘this time last year / two years ago / three years ago'.
I have let go.

But his date of birth was written in huge font across the top of his details, just under the words ‘Urgently seeking adoption’. Just above his picture. I shan’t forget his birthday. Or his picture.

I know his name.
I know about his birth parents, and what he is likely to inherit from them.
I know the colour of his hair.
I know the colour of his eyes.
I know when he was ‘taken into care’.
I know what state he was in when they took him in.
I know what he likes to eat.
I know he is already walking.

I know I shall never know him.
He will never know me.
I know another kind of grief.

But I know I will let go of this little boy too.
I know that never mind what was meant to be, this is what is, and I can’t change that.

I am getting over it.
You do, you know.
Well, I do, I know.

Hate the world today

2007-11-21T18:23:00.001Z

Stupid fucking title to this blog - choosing to adopt is not about getting off a rollercoaster - it's just a whole different one.

Fucking assholes weren't serious and have not taken the process any further with us (after INSISTING that KT consult us last week).

If it is any consolation, [hardly really, it makes no difference now] our agency has just blacklisted the agency which has screwed us over, and are very angry on our behalf.

Do they KNOW what this is like? Do they KNOW that this weekend I finally forced myself to BELIEVE that this may really happen, and cleared out the 'spare room'. Bar the cot, and redecorating (and we were waiting to see what colour his current room was before we did that) it was all ready. R put the fence up in the garden. It really had become real, and now it's been taken away from us AGAIN.

I know this is irrational, and childish but I just keep feeling it will always be taken away from me, the minute I get excited. And stupidly I had got excited.

7 miscarriages, just one missed adoption . . . so far.

That Email - or "how I told my colleagues . . ."

2007-11-17T13:59:00.000Z

Here it is - my email that I sent to the rest of my team at work - I have finally 'come out' and told them what is going on. Then, yesterday we had a big company 'do' which included plenty of opportunity for talking to various people about the situation. Lots of people know now. It is becoming more and more real.

There is a whole post that I want to write about my trepidation in this stage of the process, but I am working up to facing the truth and putting it in writing. . .

In the meantime, here is what I wrote:

SUBJECT: A LITTLE BOMBSHELL

I think the time has come to break some news . . .

Last summer, in the middle of August 2006, I picked up the telephone and called Social Services to send me some information on how to adopt a child.

That was just the beginning of a long and fairly arduous process which has involved various courses, lots of reading, many, many meetings with social workers, (particularly our own, rather sardonic, sometimes very negative one!), lots of form filling and soul-searching and even considerable work on our garden to convince the authorities that we were not planning to drown any prospective child in the brook!

Finally, on the 15th October (last month) we attended the dreaded ‘Adoption Panel’ where R and I had to appear before 12 members of a panel of deeply scary people who would decide whether or not we could be approved as adoptive parents.

I am truly excited and delighted to say that we were approved to adopt one child in the age range 0 – 3. Or possibly two children, if close in age. OMG. Really. Deep. Breath.

Approval, however, is really only another stage on the way. It’s kind of when the waiting begins.

We are now waiting to find “a match”.

We have been waiting for a month, and have been told it may take up to . . . well, any length of time really . . . and there is no guarantee it will ever happen.

So back to ‘normal life’.

And then on Tuesday evening our Social Worker called with the news that they have found a potential match for us. She was adamant however that we MUST NOT get excited at this stage as it is very early days. There is a long process to go through, other couples are also potential matches at this point so it really may not be for us. (But we are keeping our fingers crossed – and you know me, I am not a bit excited!)

EVEN IF this one does happen, we are unlikely to take our little one home until some time after Christmas. And PLEASE REMEMBER – this one REALLY may not happen. I just wanted you to know what was going on.

There, I told you it was a bombshell!

V.

P.S. If your next question is what do I plan to do when we get a child, my answer is that adoption leave is almost exactly the same as maternity leave. You won’t see me in work for at least a few months!

The Stages of Excitement?

2007-11-15T20:02:00.000Z

First get approved. (Pretty exciting . . . for about a day or two, until it sinks in that this is kind of like passing a very important exam - a huge achievement, and you are suddenly much more 'eligible' - but the search for the perfect job is only just beginning . . . and there MAY not be a job out there for you).
Your profile is circulated among 'Homefinders' in neighbouring local authorities. They are responsible for identifying possible placements for children in their area. (OK. Not very exciting at all - kind of like you have dropped your CV off at an employment agency, but you aren't really sure if they are really doing anything with it).
SW contacts you about A Child. It's a real Child. The Child you have hoped for, dreamed about. (It is very easy to get excited at this point, but remind yourself that this is just like seeing the ad for your dream job. You haven't got it yet - and there are probably plenty of better-qualified people out there). THIS IS WHERE WE ARE. PLEASE NOTE - WE ARE ONLY HERE!! ALL STAGES AFTER THIS MAY NEVER HAPPEN.
SW calls to say your details have now passed from the Homefinder to The Child's social worker - and they want to meet with you. (Ah - we are invited for interview. This is both exciting and terrifying. You prepare to make a first impression - but stress levels are high - a lot will hang on this).
Meeting with HF and The Child's SW (with your own SW) takes place - usually at your house. You may see a video of The Child, certainly plenty of photos and lots of documentation. Talk lots and lots about how you would meet Child's needs, how you would overcome any issues, how you would deal with problems, your support networks. (This is sooooo exciting, though you are still trying to keep a lid on it. But getting this far is beginning to make it seem REALLY REAL . . . it's 'first interview' stage).
The three interviewers from #5 (above) meet and discuss in private how you got on. (Will you will make it to second interview?) Still trying to keep a lid on the excitement - it's nail-biting.
A formal matching meeting takes place between all of the SWs who have potential parents for The Child. You do not attend. It may be as soul-less as a tick-box exercise to sort out the various candidates. You wouldn't want to be there. (HR has got the upper hand now - I have always thought people were better judges of compatibility and empathy - but HR says it is about points). This is the point at which you are MOST LIKELY to fall off the shortlist. Bye-bye baby. (This is why you shouldn't have got so stupidly excited sooner - silly Bridget).
Matching Panel. This is it. They are about to offer you The Job. Unless something goes quite badly wrong. Which is rare but CAN happen. Be warned. You are not there . . . quite.
We won! We won! The matching panel approved us - The Child will be Ours! We are now finally allowed to be REALLY EXCITED. Excited for real. To the power of 10.

We have not got there yet though. In the meantime, however, I am more than happy to have you guys do the excited bit. I feel like I am in a bit of a trance, and can't let myself feel too much. It all feels far too dangerous. I guess the obvious analogy (which you will understand that I did not want to use) is the being pregnant. I feel a bit as though that should be the analogy I use, but if I try to think of myself as newly pregnant. . . that's no use at all - I know it won't work out. It will all come crashing down. My defenses are almost too good now - just as I could not allow myself a glimmer of hope with my last pregnancy, I can barely do it now. And yet there is a huge difference. This child lives and breathes and is waiting for a family.

Cautions:

The agency which is handling this current 'potential match' operates something called 'competitive matching'. This means we will be played off directly against other couples. It may really at some stage be more about ticking a higher number of boxes than another couple.
We are currently only at stage 3 of the above process. There is a hell of a long way to go. Okay?
KT would not even have contacted us under normal circumstances but the homefinder insisted, before our forms could be passed to the child's SW. The child's SW might just not think us right. It could all stall in the next week or so.
Or it could stall in the next month or so.
I don't know if I can hold it together in these meetings - I get VERY nervous for job interviews and this is SO much more important. I am afraid I will either be apparently UNDER excited, uninterested, or so overwrought and overexcited that I come across like a maniac.

In other news: I wrote an email after work to the rest of my team and broke the news about what is happening. They don't even know I have been going through this whole adoption process for the last year and a half. I gave it the subject line ' A small bombshell ' - I may post it here actually.

I also told my manager, just to keep her in the loop. I gave her chapter and verse of all the provisos.

I have to remember that somewhere out there, there is at least one other couple, possibly more who are pinning their hopes on this little boy. And as R so rightly said - "the important thing is he will be adopted by someone who will love him - even if it's not us". My husband blows me away sometimes. He is desperate to have this child too.

The telephone rang!

2007-11-14T08:31:00.000Z

R's cousin and his partner (the one who lost her baby last December at 24 weeks) had dropped by yesterday evening on their way home from Devon. They had been to River Cottage to learn about pig butchering (they live in Darkest Wales and keep pigs) and while on the course had somehow managed to win a bottle of champagne. We decided to open it straightaway (of course!) and had settled down in the living room around the fire when the phone rang.

Music was playing and at gone 8pm on a Tuesday evening I wasn't expecting a call from KT. Once I realised who it was I nearly hit the ceiling.

"I don't really know how to start. . . " she began
"Just talk to me!" I squeaked.

And she told us there is a possible match.
A little boy, nearly a year old.

AND WE ARE NOT TO GET EXCITED OR GET OUR HOPES UP BECAUSE THIS IS ONLY VERY EARLY STAGES AND THIS PARTICULAR AGENCY IS VERY UNRELIABLE.

So I am not excited at all, (can you tell?) but WE HAVE A MEETING TO FIND OUT MORE FROM KT TOMORROW MORNING.

Must go to work now!

Boring stuff, but I am OK

2007-10-28T21:17:00.000Z

Haven't heard anything but a deafening silence since the panel decision.

There was some mention of 'a couple of weeks' for our forms to get into circulation. It will be two weeks tomorrow since we got the approval. I am vaguely hoping we will hear something in the next few days, but I am not counting on it. We did receive the confirmation letter, explaining exactly what the approval meant. We are approved for a child 'as young as possible - i.e. 0-3 years, or 2 siblings if both very young. If you read that in a letter, and it is all official, it is very exciting.

But the reality is we don't know if it will happen. There was that little disclaimer at the bottom of the letter, kindly explaining that, of course, there can be no guarantee that a suitable child will be matched with us. It's standard, and I am very hopeful that this WILL happen, but I have to keep my feet on the ground here.

Meanwhile, however, I am feeling more OK about my life - even my present situation - than I can remember.

Work is going shockingly well. I finally fessed up to my manager that I had been approved as an adopter. I was worried about telling her, as it is obvious that I could leave, almost at any time, on pretty short notice. But I had to tell her. Apart from anything else, I needed to ask finally for a proper pay rise, and I couldn't keep the adoption stuff secret while at the same time asking for more money. It didn't seem right. But she was great - really good. First she was clearly genuinely pleased for me that I had been approved - but also completely reassuring that the adoption should have nothing to do with whether or not my pay should go up. Of course, this is true, but the reality is that I am not really in a position to start looking around for different work, even if they refused a pay rise, because I would take a while to qualify for 'maternity' benefits, and I simply can't guarantee anything at the moment. [Adoption benefits appear to be exactly the same as maternity benefits - but the main difference is that at least you can pretty much predict when you are going to give birth - with adoption it could be anytime, and on very short notice. Can't imagine a new employer taking me on with that in the offing].

Anyway, I got my pay rise. Astonishingly I was actually offered me MORE than I had asked for. That's new - I didn't know that could happen! You know how it is, you ask for £3 - £4k and decide that you will create a fuss if they say £1k, but will settle for £2k. I hate these games, but that's the way it works usually. But they are giving me £3k straightaway and another £1.5 from April. (This does suggest to me they have been underpaying me for a while, but nonetheless, very nice thank you, and I am not one to worry about the past too much - I have never starved).

And I spent a nice weekend with my best friend who is struggling with men and work - the usual stuff, and I looked at myself and thought 'You're OK Vivien'.

I'm OK. Just waiting for something that probably will happen. The biggest 'something' of my life.

Approved

2007-10-16T18:56:00.000+01:00

I know I said it was only a formality, but it was still quite nerve-wracking. And I didn't realise how emotional I would feel when they said yes. Suddenly it seemed like a Great. Big. Thing. Which it is, of course.

We arrived just before 10am - the panel appointment was scheduled for 10.15am. KT turned up just after 10 and we sat waiting drinking tea and eating REALLY nice biscuits (ginger and chocolate - R had the chocolate cookies with the white chocolate chunks).

Time passed. The three of us for some reason got to talking about pest infestations - cockroaches, rats and bed bugs. Apparently roaches eat bed bugs - their one redeeming feature. Ugh.

Finally, just before 11am KT was called in. She had already explained she would be first in, alone, and then we would be called. Sure enough, 15 minutes later we went in. Although I knew there would be a lot of people, walking into the room was quite a shock. 12 people sitting round a huge table, all looking at us. Each person introduced themself. Social workers, including the head of the children's services, councillor, educational psychologist, and adopter, a grown-up who had been adopted, minute-taker, doctor - and more. They explained how much they appreciated our application, that they could see how much work we had done to produce it. I indicated KT - she did work hard and produced a really good reflection of us.

They asked us three questions I think: What had we learnt from the adoption classes and the whole process; who would we turn to for help when needed with our adopted child(ren); how did we think we would manage to make changes in our [present] active lifestyle to accommodate child(ren) in our life. It didn't take long, and none of the questions obviously were anything that we hadn't already thought about and discussed, so we handled it all easily. Then there was a brief discussion about the fact that we have stated we would be willing / interested in adopting more than one child. They asked us to wait outside again (with KT again) while they deliberated.

I was slightly freaked. KT was reassuring. "Nothing to worry about at all. They loved you".

We went back in, maybe 10 minutes later. Lots of smiles and how much a pleasure it has been meeting you, and we are pleased to say we have all agreed to approve your application.

That was it. Approved. I welled up. They passed me a tissue. We parted, all smiles.

KT, true to form, still had another sheet of paper that we had not signed, so we retired to a small room to sign that before leaving, and she explained what would happen next. I wasn't really able to concentrate on what she was saying. She will be in touch if she finds a child that looks like a match, that much I know. She thinks it should happen within 6 months, but she can't say for sure. But I really wasn't with it. I thanked her and hugged her (first hug).

We are over a major hurdle. The great and the good are all agreed. We can become adopters. Blimey.

Breaking the news to everyone

2007-10-13T21:25:00.000+01:00

Today I went to a race. (Not to race myself. One post I have not been able to write is how I have recently been diagnosed with osteo-arthritis in my left hip. It is as yet very minor and doesn't interfere with normal activity, but I have been advised to stop my running. I hate that. Running has sometimes been my key to sanity - and also is what mainly keeps my weight under control. But when the choice seems to be between stopping running and running the risk of being seriously lame . . . I watch old people and the way they move, it terrifies me. The slowness is pain, and suddenly I know I have to look after my joints and find an alternative to running.)

Anyway, back to the race. I bumped into a bunch of people that I haven't seen for ages, since I stopped running, but whom I know fairly well. I knew many of them before I met R, and some were an important part of my life at one time. Things have moved on, but I want to tell them about Monday, about the panel, and that soon I may have a child in a pushchair to bring, next time I come to watch them race . . . that we are going to ADOPT, that I am proud and glad, and what it has been like and all that STUFF. I just don't know how to bring the subject around to "oh, by the way, R and I are planning to adopt". I don't know what's so hard about it, but it really doesn't get into conversation so easily.

I am having a really weepy evening. Maybe just trying to clear out some of these worries. Last night I went through the last 8 months or so of bank statements, trying to figure out how we will manage on just R's income. I so want to be a stay-at-home-mum. I think it's important for kids, but especially for an adopted kid who will need so much help and confirmation of his/her worth. I need to be there.

And what about me? How does the bonding work for me? I know mothers have trouble sometimes even bonding with birth children (which I find extraordinary) but will I bond?

And will it be a boy or a girl? When I picture the future I keep slipping into seeing a girl, without meaning to, and yet I think I may be better with a boy. I don't think the gender of this child will really matter.

Oh, is it possible at all that the hormone crash I should have had at the last much glossed-over miscarriage is hitting me now?

And how the hell did I get to be 44 and have no children?

All signed and sealed . . .

2007-10-04T12:45:00.000+01:00

We have now had our last meeting with KT, who was sadly asked by her superior to rephrase the quote that was in my last post. I am pleased to report, however, that the following EXCELLENT sentence has survived to final draft:

"Although Vivien describes R as muscular I would describe him as slim (though I have never seen him with his shirt off)"

Isn't that great? And on so many levels!

I have visions of the entire panel undressing my husband with their eyes as we walk in (on Monday 15th).

Also, it is SO good to know that on the occasion when KT and R met without me that there was nothing untoward went on (or does she just protest too much?)

And you have to wonder, don't you, whether someone who writes a comment like that has some kind of secret yearning for my husband! She must have thought about it after all!

Ah well, who can blame her? Certainly not me.

I know the panel on the 15th is really just a formality - if there were any problems with our application to adopt we would most certainly have been alerted by now. So this process is reaching a critical point. And how do you think I feel?

Excited? Nervous? Impatient to move on?

No, not me.

I am suddenly concerned that I might miss work when I give it up and that the whole thing might be one huge mistake. Suddenly I realise that time on my own at home in the complete quiet is something I love. I don't know if I will love being at home with a young child who may be doing everything in his/her power to sabotage our relationship. I am worried I am too old. I am worried I won't have the energy. I will be snappy and irritable mother instead of a patient and loving one.

My bucket of confidence appears to have a leak.

A bit of me knows this is what I want, but I just keep seeing the flipside. The thing is, when you are pregnant you can't actually stop the train (well, of course you can, but you know what I mean) - with this, with adoption, in theory I could. But I won't so I'll only ever have myself to blame if it is a nightmare.

Oh yes - and the other side (the third side to this odd coin) is this fear I keep returning to that they will never find us a match. That I am simply not meant to be a mother.

Well - hope that cheered you all up!

This must help our case!

2007-09-27T16:52:00.000+01:00

"R and Vivien are adamant that they want to nurture, not torture, a child in their care"

I should think this quote (it's real, taken from our For.m F, written by the lovely KT) should stand us in great stead, wouldn't you think?

Obviously, for pure comedy value I have taken it out of context, but even so! She is actually referring to the fact that he and I are both very physically active, and the way we would deal with a child who may not enjoy physical exercise so much.

I laughed till I cried.

In fact the form, overall, is incredibly flattering of us - it made really heart-warming reading. Our 'second opinion' interview yesterday went really well. Apparently everyone is very positive.

PS I am really having a bit of trouble keeping up with others' blogs at the moment, so you will have to forgive me. It may be my imagination, or it may just be the blogs I happen to read, but lots of RM's are currently / recently having babies, and though I really am very glad for you, I still wish it could have been me. I just don't have much to comment and I find myself getting quite down if I spend too much time catching up. I guess I don't need to apologise, and I know few people come by here anyway, but I am a bit paralysed at the moment. I hope you won't stop coming by anyway, as comments here really do lift me (yuk - now that sounds begging).

PPS on a comment a little while back someone called Ruthie left me a message about wanting more info on adoption - if you are still reading, please leave me some way of contacting you?

Back to work . . .

2007-09-24T19:43:00.000+01:00

Sorry, Shinny, but I was right I am afraid - no point being the optimist commenter on MY blog!

On the bright side, it really wasn't too awful - I suppose I am just getting to know the score, and I genuinely think that without the drugs and rather terrible and desperate efforts to save these doomed pregnancies, it was all a little less traumatic.

Having said that, I had a very miserable time on Sunday morning in Paris, as I foolishly left the hotel without painkillers, to be hit by full-on cramps. Crying, doubled up on the streets of France's capital was not fun. Neither were the hours on an overnight sleeper train to Florence. Toilets on trains are never very nice, are they?

But it's all over now (baby blue).

And I really am grateful that the pregnancy didn't linger for another week or so. My holiday was 2 weeks, and by the second week I had virtually stopped bleeding, and I genuinely had a really good time. We walked from Florence to Siena which was beautiful, and the food and wine and countryside and weather were all fabulous. And R was fabulous too - it really was like being on honeymoon again. I am so lucky to be so loved.

I have of course kept this latest m/c from KT, our social worker, who last visited yesterday (Sunday!) with her draft of our Form F for us to check over. She also wants photos of us and CVs for some reason (the photos I can understand - the CVs rather less so). This week is busy on the adoption front - the SW who interviewed our parents while KT was off sick has asked for an interview on Wednesday for the 'second opinion'. And on Thursday KT is back to make any changes / discuss any points we are not happy with from the Form F.

In the meantime my best friend rang me this evening to say that she received the report of her interview with KT, and it nearly made her cry, it was so lovely. She was touched by what KT had written both about her and how supportive she is of our application, as well as about me and R, and what good adoptive parents we would make.

So why do I feel so flat about it? I think I have gone past believing. Before you say it, no, it's not the m/c causing this feeling - I felt it before, and oddly, I even felt it about the pregnancy. No. Excitement. At. All. I think it will come back, but I think the whole process has just worn me out - not just the adoption process, the whole 'I want a baby' process. Four and a half years is a long time for an impatient person like me! (Pamplemousse, I take off my hat to you!)

Oh well, back to Form F checking. The fifteenth will be on us before we know it - and then the waiting can really start!

The unexpected followed by the very familiar

2007-09-06T09:07:00.000+01:00

Just a very brief update to say that last Thursday at CD 35, (which is not unheard of for me on a normal cycle) I POAS and was genuinely surprised to get a second line. After all, I had meant to get off the rollercoaster - we certainly hadn't been 'trying', and as it's been well over a year since my last m/c I just thought I wouldn't get pg again.

I was, however less surprised to start spotting a few days later.

I had decided for my sanity (a) not to tell anyone and (b) not to do anything.

I just couldn't face bloods and HCG levels, never mind even thinking about Clexane injections, steroids and so on. They didn't help before and I just didn't think they would help this time anyway.

Needless to say this one is not a keeper either. Symptoms are gone and the spotting continues. I know the signs.

Fortunately we are about to go on holiday, and I expect to have the 'full m/c' (how to say that in a nice way?) while we are away. I'm packing pads and painkillers.

See you after my holiday.

We have a date

2007-08-07T21:22:00.000+01:00

It's been very frustrating and I meant to write about it in my last post, but KT is still off sick, and last Friday we received a letter to say she would be off for "a few weeks" more. At that point I decided we needed to contact social services and try and move forward with the process of completing our home study.

Good that I did, we arranged a meeting. Fortunately the day before our meeting Mrs Apologetic, (one of the more senior SWs) she had managed to speak to KT on the phone.

It turns out that KT has basically finished everything that she needs to have done for the home study, except interviewing our family references, and (the big one) she hasn't written any of it up! All her work has been taken over in her absence by colleagues in the department, but no-one can take our case, as we are so far down the line, KT is the one who has had all the interviews with us (8 we have counted) and also interviewed our non-family referees. The only alternative to waiting for her to finish the write-up would be to go through months of interviews to repeat the whole process. I don't want to have to do that, and clearly, neither do they.

I am assuming that KT's absence from work is due to depression or stress, from one or two pointers, so there is no real knowing when she might be well enough to return to write up the report. However, Mrs Apologetic suggested that we forget about going to panel for August or September, (grrrrr) and set a "definite" date instead for 15th October. There wasn't much option, to be honest. She thinks that KT may manage to write it all up if given a date which is a long way off, whereas trying to persuade her to write up for the August or September panel may lead to a relapse and ultimately mean we would wait even longer.

She was apologetic. We talked for a while of how frustrated I was feeling - if I thought that this was the only wait, I would be calmer I am sure, but obviously once we are approved the wait could be months and months - even years - until we are matched with a child. Can't even think of that. I know there are other people who have been waiting longer, but it is 5 years since I started trying to have a baby. This kind of setback leaves me feeling like it simply isn't meant to be.

And then the question of the family references. These are being taken up by a SW we haven't even met. Mrs Anon. She is meeting R's mother who lives locally (and is herself a SW though in a different department - they struggled to find someone who didn't already know her!) And as my parents are visiting for a long weekend this week (Thurs to Tues) they have decided they will interview them on Thursday as my family referees. This is not ideal. I had planned on using my sister, as my parents are both 86, and my mother . . . well, I am not really sure how much of this whole thing she has grasped. Her short-term memory is pretty much shot - Dad doesn't even put her on the phone to me any more when I call, she just tends to repeat something about the weather a few times. It's hard to know what kind of a testimonial she will give!

In fact, I didn't actually mention the whole miscarriage thing to my parents - I only recently told them, when I told them about the adoption process, and then it was to my dad by phone. I think it is fair to say we don't have a particularly close relationship, but with them living so far away and being the age they are, it really didn't seem like high priority to include them at every step. Does this sound very strange?

Anyway, my dad is being very supportive, and checking all his questionnaire answers with me, and making sure he doesn't make any serious blunders. So I have been explaining to my aged father the rather critical difference between looking for parents for children, and looking for children for parents. . .and so on . . .

Onward and upward. Just teeth-grindingly slow. I think my dreams of a baby by Christmas just got shattered.

Under a cloud of my own

2007-07-27T22:32:00.000+01:00

I will go insane if it doesn't stop raining soon. No, really, I am just beginning to lose it now. The wettest June on record followed by what must be the wettest July EVER and floods everywhere. It is making me miserable, or rather, I think there is other stuff making me miserable, and with this weather I just can't lift it . . .

I should be grateful, I am sure - our house did NOT flood last Friday, though colleagues at work were stuck all night in their cars trying to get home (yes, I have colleagues who live in Tewkesbury and in Upton on Severn - take a look at the pictures if you don't know what I am talking about). Our house did not flood, but our neighbour's did (they're on slightly lower ground opposite - an old mill, so they are of course near the evil brook which went beserk).

The evil brook took a large part of our garden too - about 2m x 6m (imperial? About 6ft by 20ft) It's a long story, but before we bought the house the course of the brook had been slightly altered to accommodate the bio disk system (modern eco-friendly septic tank). The rain this past 2 months has just been too much, and where the brook gently curves, the water has eaten away at the bend and the bank on the far side of the garden has just gone. First we lost the garlic, then the celeriac and fennel - now it's threatening the purple french beans. I know this isn't the end of the world, and thank heavens we don't have water in the house (how soul-destroying) AND we have clean running water and no problems with our electricity supply but still WOULD YOU STOP F*CKING RAINING NOW!

In other news, MIL had her breast cancer removed and she had the results on it today - it is a type 1 cancer - non-aggressive and she might have gone years and years and even died without it growing or becoming a threat. I spoke to her on the phone tonight and she was so perky and relieved, and just back to her normal self, it brought tears to my eyes.

Will have to break this off now - R needs picking up from town. A rare night out, and I'm the taxi cab.

More soon xxx

Slow slow SLOW!

2007-07-13T12:42:00.000+01:00

We were due to meet with KT again on Wednesday 11th, but we had a message on our phone on the Tuesday to say she was sick and could not attend 'for a couple of weeks'.

I realise she can't help being sick, and I do not completely lack sympathy (I am a really little concerned for her that it is something bad enough to warrant being off for a couple of weeks), but I must admit to getting a little frustrated and impatient at this point. The home study has just ground to a halt. And yet we have been meeting almost once a week since sometime in March.

When we last saw her (June 7th I think, off the top of my head) we knew we would have a "month off" while she took up our references, and we know from our friends that most of them have been taken up. However, neither of our family references have been visited (R's mother and my sister), so heaven knows when that will finally happen, but I don't doubt that it must do before we go to panel. I just feel a bit irritated that KT, being part time - about 2 days a week - (and working from home and therefore relatively difficult to reach by email etc) that we are losing even more time.

In the meantime things are getting a little stressful on other fronts - mainly that R's mum, Charis, has just been diagnosed with brea*st can*cer. She has actually been caught very early (a recall on a mammogram for calcification of milk ducts revealed another small tumour on ultrasound) and, in spite of news pieces that have been hitting the headlines today, she is due to undergo an operation next Friday - just 4 weeks after the ultrasound detected it. So I am certainly not complaining on that account. However, as bad luck would have it, R's brother, wife and 7-year-old Stan are emigrating to Canada, and are leaving just 2 days before Charis' operation. So poor Charis is in bits - never mind that she will still have to go through 6 weeks of radiotherapy, with treatments 50 miles away every other day. She is 65 in September but still working and regards herself as indestructible, so this whole episode has upset her at quite a profound level. (Her husband, R's dad, has been diagnosed with Alzheimers, and though he is not yet too bad, he isn't really taking this in or being much of a support to her). Poor thing, it's a lot to be dealing with (for both of them really).

I guess it sounds a bit mad, even a bit selfish of us, but Charis would be so thrilled if we got a baby soon - even if we just got approved and she had it to look forward to. I really think it would make a huge difference, especially bearing in mind that the 7-year-old is her only grandchild, and soon to be in Canada.

BUT - if the panel next meets at the end of August and there is still so much to get through, what are the chances the whole thing will get delayed?

Come on KT - stir yourself!

Morphing

2007-07-02T19:38:00.000+01:00

Maybe it is time. Time to morph this blog into what the title would never suggest . . . well, maybe it would if you gave it some thought.

I have had enough of the recurring miscarriage. I want to write about the adopti*n process.

This blog is now my adopti*n blog.

It is beginning to feel as though it may all actually happen.

We last met with KT nearly a month ago, and she has been meeting our referees. It has been a little nerve-racking, as you can never be quite sure what will happen at these meetings.

Nonetheless, we chose, of course, GOOD friends that we trust, and who care about us. But KT had warned us that it is not unusual for referees to be a little reluctant, not all that chuffed to be cross-examinedby a nosey social worker.

I rang round - talked at great length to Y and E, my 2 main referees. Explained how KT can come across as very jaded, very negative etc etc. I explained that KT had told us that she would expect referees to have good insight into what we would be taking on, to understand that this adoption business is not like 'having your own'. I talked to Y about attachment and disability issues, I lent E my second-best book on attachment, and talked to her about how it had changed since the 60s when her mother adopted her brother at 8 weeks and immediately changed his name.

E was great. She left the attachment book lying around conspicuously. She chatted at length about her brother and listened to how things have changed, as I warned she would have to. She liked KT. They got on. E was delighted with the idea that referees are what KT sees as 'kind of non-religious god-parents to the adopted child, when he or she arrives'. E wants to be the Evil Aunt. She is finally excited too, and it is lovely to have my best friend excited about this with me. (I should add that she has never had nor wanted children, although she spends time with kids from the street, painting and creating with them, running an informal club, enjoying each child's unique worldview and sympathising with each one's difficulties).

When KT visited Y both Y's children were out. What a pity. Y epitomises the mother I want to become, and I wish KT could have seen her in that role, patient, kind, loving and giving. But Y too gave lots of good answers. We chatted for ages afterwards so that I could understand where KT is coming from. But I don't think I need worry. KT does most of the talking (bizarrely) and said to Y and her husband some very positive stuff. Something along the lines of "you can never say 100%, but Vivien and R are as good as you get in this game".

Phew.
I said to R yesterday - do you think this will finally happen?

He answered with some excitement, in the positive.

We go 'to panel' in August / September.

That means we should be approved and ready to take a child.

KT is backing us for a child as young as possible. Certainly under 1 year.

She started asking us odd questions about would we be prepared to move out of the county if they could find a baby within the county for us.

YES YES - of course we would move out of the county. (Hoops are our speciality these days.) I think she is serious. I think she wants to place a local baby with us. Has she one in mind?

She really seems to be rooting for us.

Don't let them put you off adoption with horror stories about the selection process. It really hasn't been so awful. The worst has been letting go of the hope that I would have a birth child. Or at least, coming to terms with the fact that I shan't. That is a long process, but necessary.

But it doesn't mean I can't be a mother.

What a fantastic hope. This might really happen. It's even possible that I will have a baby by Christmas. Though I am not pinning my hopes on that as a deadline. I am trying to be realistic!

Running across the mountains

2007-05-18T20:43:00.001+01:00

Since we more-or-less stopped ttc I have given myself permission to run again, and in February, after a long lay-off with a twisted ankle that kept swelling up, I started with a slow and painful 2.8 miles. I have managed to bully myself into keeping up the momentum and have managed to run 3 - 4 times a week, including a run at the weekend which I have lengthened by about 10 minutes each week.

Not last weekend, but the 3 weekends before I have run out from my house and run 14 or 15 miles in the beautiful Wye Valley. Often as I have run I have written poetic, life-affirming blog entries in my head. It is such a privilege to live where we do, and to be healthy and fit enough to run for more than two and a half hours as the morning mist clears. I have seen buzzards and canada geese, swans, moorhens and a heron. And last week R came with me and we saw a pair of hares (wonderful, wonderful animals) and just a few hundred metres from our home we saw a calf that had literally been born only minutes, and watched as it tried to struggle to its feet.

All this training has been towards an event tomorrow in aid of the mountain rescue team. I enter it most years, but have not been fit enough to run the 17 mile ridge route since 2002. Tomorrow that's what I will do, with a friend for company (R will be helping run the event, and therefore not running with me). I am not as fit as I was in 2002 (I had recently run my second consecutive London Marathon that year, and I doubt I shall ever be that fit again!) But it is good to know I have pulled myself together for this.

I apologise for that last post. And thank you for very kind and generous comments - you have big hearts, that I am not sure I deserve. I am not so unlucky.

Sorry for myself

2007-05-14T20:48:00.001+01:00

I don't know whether I can keep this blog up. I think with adoption ahead of me I need to put the rollercoaster of the miscarriages behind me. I am not really finding any of this very helpful - I am really glad for those of you out there who are pregnant, but it is doing my head in. I got pregnant lots of times, so that means I'm not really much of an infertile? I am now 43, so I would be stupid, right, to continue hoping?
I remember long ago, before I started writing this blog, reading a miserable, rather bitter message on an IF message board written by someone who had 'gradually seen everyone else get pregnant and move on'. She described how she felt - it was like a sense of abandonment by the people she had once turned to.

This is a bit raw, and is not meant to sound as though I am like her. I don't feel abandoned, but I feel I may need to abandon you. I read more blogs than I write posts here, but your blogs mostly make me sad or jealous.

I didn't just lose one baby - I lost 6.
I know when each one happened, but I don't mark the 'would have been due' dates. Apart from the one on my birthday and the one on my dad's birthday (which are obviously hard dates to forget for other reasons) I don't mark the days that the miscarriages happened. After all, when does it happen? The day the beta doesn't double? The day you start bleeding a tiny bit? The days you cramp and bleed and pass the huge clots? Is it over when the bleeding stops?

And I don't have a current or even a future pregnancy to look forward to. No-one expects it of me anymore. I have helped them to get to this point, and I am happy that I have, because the pressure had to stop. I will never be a mother. Never. Be. A . Mother, Vivien.

If we have a child, if this adoption process is eventually "successful" I will not breastfeed it. It will not look either like me or like R. People will always refer to his/her 'real' parents. It will belong to me even less than any birth mother's child.
I will never give birth.
Give. Birth.
That is really something to give.

KT said at our last meeting that she did not doubt mine and R's capacity to love and empathise with a hurting child. (What else are we, though a little older?) She felt we were warm, loving people who could offer a child a great deal. But we needed to give serious thought to how we would cope with not being loved back. I said I would carry on loving, (a child never needs your love more than when s/he least deserves it) and KT said that being a parent was essentially about giving without any expectation of receiving anything back. Sounds about right to me, but what do I know?

What if I find I can't give any more? Sometimes I feel that I can't already.

Please excuse long pauses between posts, but I am struggling to keep this blog going. I am not sure if it has a point.

Angry post.

2007-05-02T21:04:00.000+01:00

Here's a rant, and probably of very little interest, but it bugged me, so I shall write it down.

My brother, a lifelong smoker had his 52nd birthday at the beginning of March.
His wife, 39 and seriously overweight.
Both bone-idle, live in south London and generally live in a state of inactivity, with the attitude that the world owes them.

My brother undoubtedly adores his 2 year old daughter.
But has no contact with the kids he had, with his first wife, a daughter in 1979 and a son in 1980.
He left (or was thrown out) in about 1985.

This is his second chance.
His son was born on 21 March.
A perfect baby.

They grumble that it wakes them up.
They send their daughter back to her room repeatedly in the mornings until they can lever themselves out of bed (often well after 9am)
Hell, they couldn't even get out of bed for us - we spent 2 hours on Sunday morning entertaining their daughter (a pleasure and delight) until they finally emerged, groaning.

I realise I am not the best judge here, but do you get where I am coming from?
If I had ever hoped for fairness I was being unrealistic, I know.
I spent a long time after returning from the weekend in London depressed, and finally sobbing. How else can I deal with the injustice? Always in the knowledge that I don't have any right to a child, but I swear, my brother has had 4.

In the meantime, while they go on in their own sweet way, we continue our meetings with KT. She mellows and we have frank discussions about attachment and our concurring if slightly radical views.

I told her about my anger with my brother, who spends his time telling me how devoted he is to his daughter, while barely giving the child the time of day.

I told her about my anger with the colleague who had her baby just before Christmas and came back to work full time at the beginning of April.

You know what - I think I shall be contentious. I think this is wrong. Just wrong. And selfish.
She says she needs the money, they took on a big mortgage blah blah blah. A mutual friend tells me they just spent a ton of money on a new music system and huge flat screen TV. It's about priorities really, isn't it.

Children who go into childcare very early (6 months) appear to thrive and socialise, but of course they are being pushed to soon into self reliance, they are learning to be carers instead of having the security of being cared for. This is the discussion I have had with KT. She feels like an ally, which I daresay is her job.

I am coming through a period when I have questioned whether I can go through with the adoption thing. But R is my rock, and is really looking forward to being a dad. I feel I need to get to the stage when we meet the child but that is still a long way off.

It's started - so what?

2007-04-19T21:20:00.000+01:00

We have finally started the home study, which involves regular, lengthy meetings with a social worker who will ultimately represent us as 'Prospective Substitute Parents' (sic) on the infamous F*rm F.

I hated our first meeting, and it left me wondering if we could get on with this (new) SW. Let's call her KT.

KT turned up at our house for the first time, and almost before introductions had been made she launched into a lengthy explanation of IF we were to have a child placed with us it would be the LEGAL OBLIGATION of the council not to allow it to be placed anywhere where it might be at risk of accident blah blah blah blah . . . and were we AWARE that we would have to make our garden SAFE?
Answers I wish I had given #1
no . . . what, you mean a 2ft deep brook running through the garden with a 4 ft high bank either side, and a bridge with no handrail isn't SAFE enough for a toddler? Heavens - this is going to be harder than I thought.

But things didn't get much better. KT looked askance when I responded in the negative to her question as to whether I had discussed our plans to adopt with my manager at work. No, why should I have? We are hardly so far down the line as to make me confident that we will actually adopt. Who knows what will happen. 4 years ago I thought that I would have a baby. You know, give birth, the old-fashioned option. But adopting is just so TRENDY these days . . .

There was much, much more. I was told in no uncertain terms that keeping my job would be out of the question (legally, even, she has the right to demand this of me, apparently). KT told us stories of how an adoptive mother she had known was so stressed by the whole experience of taking on siblings, that 'I honestly thought she was going to die - she just kept losing more and more weight - I thought she would DIE". We were lectured on how adopting won't solve our PROBLEMS (at this point I did recover my voice to mutter that I didn't feel we had PROBLEMS to solve - and certainly not problems that I would ever imagine could be solved by the addition of a troubled child to our household). And once again we were told how EVERY child coming through the adoption/looked-after system would be deeply disturbed by the severence and/or non-existence of a good attachment with their original mother. (An aside here - attachment theory is absolutely fascinating, if terrifying in its implications. I would recommend reading up on it, whatever kind of parent you are hoping to be - not just adopters).

But we have come on since then. We confronted her the next meeting, feeling there was really nothing to lose, and she really shifted her attitude. Hey - she even apologised, which was very important to me for some reason. We recently met and spent nearly 2 hours discussing my family background, and she made some very astute observations. I'm thinking we may be all right.

And now we have a f*rm F to look at. Just so you can have a clue as to what this is all about, here is an extract from one page. Each of these "options" is followed by three 'tick' boxes: Would accept / Would not accept / Would discuss. That's it. It's that easy: (sorry - have encoded a little to avoid popping up on g**gle searches for any of these things!)

Ch*ld's relevant f@milyhistory:

Parental schiz*phrenia
Parent/s with severe le@rningdifficulties
Parent/s with history of dr*g / alc*h*l abuse
Parent/s with specific m*dical c*ndition
Other identified str*ngths or exp*rience

Ch*ld's existing m*dical c*ndition

D*wn's syndrome
AI*DS or HI*V
Auti$tic $pectrum Di$order
Cere8ral Pal$y
F*etal Alc*hol $yndrome
H*patiti$ B or C
Other . . .

Child's rel*vant p*st exp*rience

Experience of n*glect
Exp. of phy$ical ab*se
Exp. of $echsual abu$e
$evere em*tional difficulties
Other . . .

Ch*ld's curr*nt and @nticipatedfuncti*ning

M*bility imp@irment
V*sual imp@irment
H*aring imp@irment
Mild le@rningdifficulties
Severe le@rningdifficulties
Beh@viour@ldifficulties
Em*tional difficultie$
Dev*lopmental d*lay / unc*rtainty

Doesn't look so bad, does it?

Then you read about the effects and case studies of children who have been victims of mere neglect or just observed physical abuse, and I wonder how I would feel really about a child who poked out the eyes of my cat before strangling it, as in one case study (OK - in the case study it was the family's pet rabbit, but I don't have a rabbit). I would know, of course, that it isn't the child's fault, but would that be enough? Would that be enough if the same child were also unable to show me any affection?

Am I getting beyond myself yet? Am I just synical and unworthy?

In the words of dear Dino - are we having fun yet?

Back

2007-04-09T20:57:00.000+01:00

I am still here, just lost my sign-in for a while, and have been awaiting the hi-tech world of broadband.
It's here!
Home study has just started.
Will tell you more soon.

Lazy post and a request

2007-01-15T13:11:00.000Z

Request first. Does anybody understand the information on this link? Obviously I can understand bits of it, but any further insight would be very gratefully received. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=58697

Second - I received the following on an email, and I know it does me good to do a bit of blessing counting - and this is quite interesting too. . .

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:

There would be:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all
6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.

The following is also something to ponder...

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish
someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.

Hope you don't find this too 'preachy'. I just liked it - maybe it just hit the right spot for me today.

What do they know?

2007-01-13T13:12:00.000Z

I think I must have known that at some point in this adoption process I would get frustrated that Social Services views might be at odds with my own, but this does feel rather personal.

We put in our application to begin our home study just before Christmas, in the expectation that we would be able to get started in January. When they received our application I had a call from E, our current social worker. She had already explained that she couldn't be the person to do our home study with us, because she had just taken on another couple and she only works part time anyway. When she phoned she said something rather convoluted about how she would like to have one last meeting with us before the homestudy was passed to a colleague, so that she could give an up-to-date handover. . .

Well, she came round on Tuesday and basically said that they would not start a home study until we had had some counselling. Or more specifically until I had, because she 'feels' there is 'something there' which I need some counselling for.

I made th mistake of trying to discuss it with her. Although my last miscarriage was only June, I have had the chance to come to terms with them, through repeated experience since November 03. I have never seen a heartbeat, never had a scan in which there was really, undeniably a baby (we saw a yolk sac once. That's about it). I don't want to be accused of being in denial here, but honestly I do not feel that I have been through anything like the traumas that Nicole or Jill or Manuela or so many, many others have. And actually, that experience with H was more likely to leave me needing counselling . . . I gave her a few instances of how I genuinely don't think I need counselling - I have good friends I can talk to, this blog and all your support, and so on. I have even turned around all the problems that the miscarriages, albeit indirectly, caused me at work. But she wasn't having it of course. I should have known - these SW's have filled out a box that says 'recommend for counselling before proceeding' and I cannot untick the box, no matter what. Well, only by getting some.

She had brought along an embarrassing couple of sheets of printout from a google search about counsellors in our area - mostly, if you looked closer, they would be of no use to me (I am not a disturbed adolescent, for starters). But R has contacted his GP who is referring us to someone at the hospital, and SW will be happy with that, apparently. She says I need only go once (to tick the box) and if I think that is enough . . . but not going at all is not an option, obviously.

Hoops hoops hoops.

I WANT TO GET ON WITH THIS! I want to move forward, to feel that there might actually be some hope on the horizon.

Oh - and moving out of the county may not help as although we could possibly adopt an "easier" child, we would be further from our 'support networks' which would not look so good for us from an agency's viewpoint.

We aren't progressing very quickly here.

Sorry - my frustation is showing through.

How far to go?

2007-01-03T18:14:00.000Z

I drove down to a village just over the border into Wales to pick up the turkey for Christmas dinner.

I came across a beautiful village in Wales, but really not so far from where we currently live.

I thought - "if we lived HERE we would be outside of the little county we currently live in - and we would be eligible to adopt FROM that county."

My social worker called and confirmed this would be the case, but said - "don't get too carried away - we really don't have many babies".

And I don't really want to leave our current house. Plus the other stuff we would have to consider - our house is not high value, and we would end up with a much higher mortgage, and if I had to stop working too .... and and and.

So I have been looking at property web sites in the area, but most of the houses in our price range are just hideous and I couldn't bear it.

And so it goes on. I am not even expecting all this to be successful.

In other news -

H (see previous posts) gave birth on 12/12 to a baby girl, Amelie, at 24, nearly 25 weeks. Her little heart gave out very soon after the birth. She never breathed, though they filled her lungs with oxygen. By a weird fluke I was there at the hospital, though not in the delivery room as it happened. It was the saddest, saddest thing I have ever witnessed. Amelie was tiny but so perfect. I was under instructions not to cry, and I spent over an hour with H and her partner, N (R's only cousin) and I didn't cry. I don't know how. But when I got home that night, and talked to R and his sister (who was visiting) I realised that H and N would have to leave Amelie behind when they left the hospital. The thought broke something and I just broke. That kind of sobbing that makes your whole body heave.

Then A, my neice, gave birth to an 8lb 6oz baby girl, on 18th December. Name, Holly Rose. I am just jealous and can't work out why she has this baby and I don't have one.

I know there is no justice, life is not fair. I still wish it could be though. For all our sakes.

May 2007 hold for you everything you wish it would hold.

Looking back, moving on

2006-12-10T08:54:00.000Z

I had my first miscarriage on Thanksgiving day in 2003 - three years ago.
I had 2 more in 2004, 2005 and I have had one, (so far) in 2006.
Around this time last year, R and I said we would give it until the end of this year and stop. And after #6 we decided it was time to look at adopting.
My period is due in about a week, and if it turns out I am pregnant, I would most likely miscarry early in the new year - possibly mid January. Maybe it would bring final closure. If I do get my period, I think I will actually do the unthinkable and go back to using contraception. I need to let it go, and I think I can.
We finished the adoption course, and now have the forms to request our home study. Unfortunately, the social worker we both really liked has just taken on another couple and won't be able to do me and R. We're disappointed, as we had a good understanding with her, and she doesn't have that 'too good' thing that lots of social workers seem to get. But to be fair, all the sw's we have met so far have been fine, so I am sure it will be OK. About 6 months of the home study - a full grilling on both sides to get at all the hidden impurities - and then we can 'go to panel', for someone to make a decision about whether we would be suitable. I am confident we will be OK, but matching with a child seems like asking the impossible - but let's climb that one when we get there.

It is fair to say that I am feeling much more positive, and though these things may seem minor, my life feels happier, and more in my control:

I have had a hair cut, which involves me straightening it daily - amazing, (you would understand if you knew me!) but it really does look great and I feel so much better for it.
R and I are about to enter week 4 of a detox diet - roughly speaking this has meant no caffeine, no alcohol, no processed food, no sugar, no wheat, no eggs or dairy. And I would never have believed that (a) I could do this, or (b) I would not hate it - but we have done it, and it is actually making us both feel really good. Obviously, we are human and have slipped now and then but we have both lost a bit of weight (a good 5lbs each) which is always positive.
Work is going much better. I went to my manager with a proposal that I changed my role to do much more writing and editing - in fact to take on the marketing department's writing load. It's a huge job, but it's what I love best, and (shock of shocks) she has given me the new role AND restructured the rest of the department's roles around it AND given me an assistant writer who will report to me. Sorry if this sound meglomanic, but I AM SO GLAD TO BE MANAGING SOMEONE AGAIN AT LAST. I think it is simply that my own self-worth slipped so low.
It's nearly Christmas and I am looking forward to it. AND I have bought all but R's present. Any ideas for presents for the perfect husband who has just about everything he needs, likes Paul Smith and the Outdoors and doesn't really do reading - definitely not fiction. . .?

And finally, yesterday I bought myself a beautiful pair of Rockport brown nubuck boots which will replace the ones I have worn since the trip to the USA in 2003 when I lost my first baby. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe I can move on now.

Another class, another breakdown

2006-11-11T20:32:00.000Z

Always bloody crying, me. Probably not a good talent for someone who needs to convince a bunch of social workers that I would make a good parent of a disturbed child. But first things first . . .

I am feeling quite low – I have recently been going through quite a protracted process trying to get a new job. I am SO ready for a change, and the BEST job came up. The job was interesting and exactly suited to my experience. Hours were just 3 days a week and school holidays off too, (heaven to give up full-time stress) and in return I would only face a cut of about £200 a month, which R was very happy to put up with. He has been so supportive of my attempts to cut down my working hours. I would be so much more sane. But, as you have guessed, I didn’t get the post – beaten on the second interview into second place. All that work on the presentation for nought. I am gutted. In my head I had left my current job, gone through all the emotional stuff, and KNEW it was the right thing to do. So the phonecall last night, though lovely in many ways (she said I was actually her first choice, and she would like to keep in touch and really liked me) was still devastating. I did the oh-so-familiar waking up in the morning feeling OK, for a few seconds . . . till I remembered. I have certainly come through worse things, but it feels tough – having failed on the baby front, it would be nice to have a career success. Crap lives. Tears were had.

And on the adoption front:

Another class today. As I mentioned, we are fosterers and adopters all together, but the focus seemed more on the fosterers today – lots of talk about the insecurity for the child of a shorter-term placement etc. R and I are in fact the only couple there who do not already have children (the other couple looking to adopt are already parents of teenagers). I felt doubly inadequate – no children (inadequacy #1 in a world full of families) and no direct experience of bringing them up and knowing the ‘normal birth child’s developmental processes’. Oh weh. Oh inadequate me. More tears.

We started with attachment theory, and a very basic overview thereof. If I may summarise crudely, ‘lucky babies’ who get their needs seen to reliably by their carers, learn that the world will respond to their cries, and will smile back when they smile. They can influence what happens in the world, which is a good place to be. As against the unlucky baby whose needs are not met, who learns that the world is a dangerous, threatening, non-responsive place where s/he needs to take care of himself. S/he will likely switch off from attempting to get a helpful and friendly response, and learn to self-soothe in many inappropriate and ineffectual ways. The world is not a good place to be, and they do not have influence. And all that entails (lots, of course). And not only that, but once over the age of 18 months when the ‘reptilian’ part of the baby’s brain ceases further growth, there appears to be little a parent can do to reverse these fundamental negative attitudes towards the outside world and oneself.

I am not completely naïve, and none of this was new, but there is another consideration. In this very small county in which I (happily) live, there is no chance to adopt within the area, as there is just too much risk of adoptees eventually inadvertently coming into contact with a member of their birth family. (Undesirable). This means that R and I would have to adopt from OUT of county – and as other counties, being larger CAN find homes for ‘easy to place’ children within their own area, we would only get considered for the less easy to place – ie a little more baggage all of their own! Does this make sense? In short - R and I cannot expect a younger, easy-to-place child.

What can I make of this? Part of me says ALL of us are damaged, and we all cope in many different ways. Adopted children are all individuals, and I know I will not be an idiot parent and ignore all the basic advice.
(I have just been slightly scandalised by reading a story on an adoption web site about a parent struggling with an adopted 7 year-old. In spite of the fact he was clearly going through a really difficult time behaviourally and having problems at school they had decided to uproot and move to France. What? And then she even complained at the lack of support from their social services. Sigh.)

Anyway, the upshot is I am really keen to hear stories of anyone who has adopted children, maybe more than just a few months old, and who has had a POSITIVE experience. I know social workers have to give you a picture that includes all the worst case scenarios, so that you can’t claim to have been misled, but I need a bit of balance here!

(Oh – and next week is sexual abuse and dealing with allegations . . . that should be a laugh a minute).

Hey – I am still upbeat. Well, hanging in there, anyway. I'll have to get some of that shampoo ' No More Tears'. I wonder if it works?

First adoption class (check)

2006-11-06T19:52:00.000Z

On Saturday we went to our first full day of 'Adoption Preparation'. It wasn't a bad way to spend the day - because of the small numbers of people involved we are 'prepared' alongside prospective foster parents. There were 10 prospective parents - 4 adopters and 6 fosterers, ranging in age. 4 couples and a man and a woman who were single foster parents.

We had a good introduction to the role of the social workers, and were given some case studies. The case studies involved passing little brightly-coloured plastic figures from home to home as their story was told. One little boy was taken into foster care from his drug-addicted parents almost from birth, and then adopted at 15 months. R and I had the little plastic figure as adoptive parents. I was ridiculously happy.

I did have a tearful moment, as the lifestyle of these birth-parents was discussed. They were taking amphetamines, and would be wakeful or asleep for days on end, right throughout the pregnancy. It brought some anger and frustration to the surface. How can some women do this, and still give birth to a healthy baby, while the rest of us struggle with finding the finest balance of progesterone, prednisolone, heparin and stress? (Oh - and then miscarry anyway).

But mostly I'm not angry. I am actually a little relieved that we are changing our direction. Honestly? No, we are not yet using contraception, as we always said we would 'give it till the end of the year' - but we are on the way to having a family, and I genuinely believe, as we approach Christmas 2007, it may be WITH A CHILD. It is an amazing thought.

Update on the pregnancies in my last post:
E, the SIL is due in March, but is already experiencing a lot of difficulties with the pregnancy. She is quite overweight, which I understand may have an influence, but she seems to have symptoms of pre-eclampsia already. I hope it's not serious - I can never judge with her whether it is really a serious threat or how much is just my brother and her making a bit of a fuss. Which they do about all sorts of other things, but who can say?

H, the cousin's partner, (American) is having a real nightmare. She has what I believe is called PROM, which means she has a ruptured amniotic sac. The baby (at 19 and a half weeks) has no fluid around it, and she may miscarry any time. I spoke to her yesterday. Her lovely doctor has already said 'not to worry, this is a very unusual condition, and will have no effect on future pregnancies'. FUTURE PREGNANCIES?? What about this one? Poor H. Meanwhile she stays in bed in the hope that the tear will mend itself, and the pregnancy will continue all right. Please let it be so.I feel oddly guilty. For all the envy I felt, I never would have wished this. If you are the praying type, could you put a word in for her?

And finally A, my niece, is due on December 7th. She feels the baby will arrive early to join his or her 4 year old brother.

Of my sister and catching up with the world

2006-10-23T13:51:00.000+01:00

I had a long, long chat with my younger (only 41) sister over the weekend. For a long time she has been having problems with one eye, and no-one could tell her what it was.

Finally her GP gave her the news that it was an inflamed optic nerve, and that this is the most common symptom denoting the onset of MS.

Fuck.

She then waited 6 weeks for a brain scan, which revealed no lesions, so has been diagnosed as NOT having MS, but having a 60/40 chance of developing it.

And I worry about not having a baby.

In the same conversation I also discovered that my niece is due her second baby in just over 6 weeks, and my SIL is pregnant again (her first is now 2 and a half years old – same as my first would have been).

And R’s only cousin’s partner is also pregnant.

I guess they don’t do it on purpose to destroy me!

In the meantime, on 16th October, we filled in what seemed like dozens of forms. And we have confirmed that we will attend a preparation course on every Saturday throughout November. That’s soon! And they expect us to use contraceptives from now on. Oh – I could say more!!

The news is FULL of adoption stories, what with the lovely Mad.onna’s latest exploits. Good word, exploit. Directly related to exploitation. Don’t be fooled – this is NOT about helping a child out of poverty – there are 100 other ways to do this before taking a child out of its home, away from its father, and bringing it up where I believe it can never feel it belongs. Money is very important, especially when you don’t have it, but it isn’t everything.

Rant over.

Tentatively moving forward

2006-10-11T18:15:00.000+01:00

We had a conversation, R and I.
What to do about the adoption thing?
It all seems like a huge mountain to climb, with absolutely no guarantees that you will reach the summit, and every chance the failure to do so could push us over the edge.

BUT.

What if ....adoption was an easy process?
What if .....we just had to fill in a form with our names and address and in due course get our adopted toddler?
Would we do it?
Yes, of course.
And we UNDERSTAND why there have to be all these hoops.
They wouldn't know just from a simple form if we are nice people (which we are) or axe murderers (which we aren't).

SO
We will go through the process.
We always have the caveat - if it gets too much, we can stop.

So I phoned the department who had interviewed us.
OMG - they said they REALLY liked us.
They were about to call us to 'kind of headhunt' us, as we hadn't contacted them immediately.
[Do you know - my confidence has been so low that I got off the phone and CRIED because it's the first time anyone 'external' has been positive about my prospects as a parent (or, to be frank, professionally) for AGES.]
Suddenly I feel there may be some hope out there.

Next appointment with Social Services - 16th October.
Let the vetting process begin.
Am I afraid?
Miaow.

Pictures

2006-09-26T18:50:00.000+01:00

I have finally sussed out how to upload a couple of pics - I have been messing around on photoshop, because it's fun - these 2 are me - the top one was taken on the second evening of my hen weekend, 2 years ago, and actually the day I started spotting with my 3rd miscarriage - but I kept smiling, as you see.

The second one is a bit more recent - R's 40th birthday meal, taken by the friend who was his best man at our wedding.

Hope you like them anyway.

Unusually for me . . .

2006-09-25T18:20:00.000+01:00

Throwing caution to the wind - here is a post I DIDN'T write earlier. Mostly I fiddle about writing something in Word before translating it into an entry, but this one is spontaneous, mostly because I am stuck here writing this at work (at 6.15pm) and I just want to go home.

Feeling awfully odd.
We had a visit from 2 women from Social Services last Tuesday. They stayed about 2 hours and we talked about adoption. None of it was really surprising or new - they needed to suss us out a little and explain a few of the basics - children up for adoption are

Emotionally abused, sometimes sexually abused
likely to have been sent back and forth from foster carers to birth parents until finally the decision is reached that birth parents cannot hack it
History of neglect
Will have difficult behaviours
Often idolise birth parents
etc etc etc

None of this was a surprise to me - there is plenty of reading material that has already told me all of this. Then there were questions for us. And some indication of what we will have to go through in terms of a process. About 9 visits, each lasting 'at least 3 hours'. They told us about another couple who had halted the whole process 'just to have a break'. We were told 'you will learn things about each other you never knew' etc etc etc.

It has become a given that I will stop working if we can adopt. At the meeting I was entirely up for that. I do believe that bringing up a child is important enough that I should stop work. But . . . I don't know, it seemed that I would HAVE to if we wanted to stand a chance.

Part of it (and I know there are really good reasons for this) but PART of the issue is the knowledge that if you are a woman who can produce a baby of your own, heaven and earth have to be moved before the baby is taken away.

If you are a woman who is unable to produce a baby you have to learn to move heaven and earth, and I am so afraid to fail at this too.

I KNOW they set you up to believe the worst - they don't want people who aren't sure / can't cope / don't understand the implications. I know I COULD do this. I could be a good mother to a needy child. But I don't think I will enjoy the process of proving it.

But we passed the initial hurdle, jumped through the first hoop, and we have a letter now inviting us to a prospective adopters' course on 4 consecutive Saturdays in November.

I am really wondering if I should do it.

A little venom

2006-09-07T17:40:00.000+01:00

A little venom is directed today at the highly regarded Dr. Gi.llian Lo.ck.woo.d, who 'appeared' today on Radio 4's today programme to irritate the f**k out of me.
She is, in fact, the Dr who first 'treated' me once the NHS had said I was beyond their help.
Now she putting on record that women who consider it important that at some time in their lives to have child(ren) should FREEZE their eggs in their EARLY 30's.

It is SO-O-O-O-O difficult to get pregnant once you are over about 36, and EVEN if you are clever enough to manage to do that, the risk of miscarriage is S-O-O-O-O-O high because (and this is what made me want to KILL HER) 'the eggs are quite simply beyond their sell-by date'.

It isn't that I don't want younger women to be aware that eggs get older, and so on, or to not have babies later in life simply because they didn't have that information, but PLEASE - is there anyone out there that doesn't find this sort of CRASS remark either (a) depressing, (b) pressurising or (c) plain insulting?

Or is it just me?

I missed you. I'm back.

2006-09-04T18:41:00.000+01:00

Yes, I am back. I am sorry for the long break. I did miss you, and have been checking on some of you a little . . .

Actually I have been having a strange old time, and wondered for a while if this blogging was really doing me any good, but I miss you all, and just because I may never be pregnant again . . . but I am getting ahead of myself.

A quick update – the holiday was FULL OF SNOW which actually eventually drove us off our planned route, which was a shame but we did lots of good stuff anyway. I also, unfortunately, managed to get the worst cold that I can remember having in YEARS, but I think, strangely, it allowed other members of the group to use me as an excuse to bail out of the high altitude stuff with 2 feet of snow on the ground. Glaciers are pretty dangerous when you can’t see the crevasses which lie under a layer of soft snow . . .

Anyway, that was the holiday. R and I are going away to Brittany for a long weekend at the end of this month to have a relaxing break, as the 2 weeks in Austria really couldn’t be described as relaxing. Oh, and the middle finger of my left hand is still very swollen nearly 4 weeks after hurting it when I fell off some rocks. (Fortunately I was roped to R and another when it happened, and fortunately I didn’t land on my head. The finger injury seemed a small price to pay, but is still painful. I will go and see a doctor eventually, I promise).

Then there has been a bit of a saga with this supposed pelvic infection. I have had all sorts of tests and swabs and smears (ugh!) but they have all shown up clear. Now my doctor thinks maybe it IS digestive after all. I am frustrated and angry, and have also been very upset by my GP’s insinuation that my physical symptoms (lower abdominal pain) are almost certainly due to ‘my pumping myself full of drugs’. I wonder if he would have had the same attitude if I had managed to keep the baby? Why are people so smug? He doesn’t even mean it, but every time I drag myself back to see my GP I seem to end up in tears again. It is wearing me out.

And so, worn out, I find I have little energy to put into writing this stuff down. I thought maybe a break would do me good – and actually, if I am honest, I think it does help me to stop obsessing so much – get on with today instead of spending my time thinking of what nearly was, what might have been.

And then I think . . . can I write a blog about recurring miscarriages when I don’t really believe I will get pregnant again. How can I get pregnant? What would be the point? Since the weight of medical opinion appears to believe that I am just too old. . . well, I didn’t get any younger since the last m/c, and I really don’t think I am about to. It makes me angry and sad, but I think they have worn me down. I am just too old. Bad eggs, bad body, bad me. Or not good enough.

And I am stuck a bit in a little world where going forward and say, adopting, is fraught with difficulties and new questions – I need to be confident and stable to face the prospect of social services inquisitions . . .

One day I will be confident and stable.

Ha!

More soon - I promise!

The mountains call

2006-07-28T10:05:00.000+01:00

Four-drug strategy reduces repeat miscarriages

Not sure if above link will work - some day I will HAVE to make the time to figure out all this HTML stuff, but it won't be for a couple of weeks - we are off to do the Hohen Weg (Glacier Route) of the Stubai mountains near Innsbruck in Austria.

See you in a couple of weeks.

Waffling on about adoption already . . .

2006-07-26T18:55:00.000+01:00

First I have to say:

What lovely comments you lovely people leave for me. Thank you so much for your support. I really, really appreciate it.

Things ARE improving, and I am really trying to be positive.

In response to my email to the adoption agency I had an email asking me to call. I did, and spoke to a woman who had a bit of a grating voice, and I thought I would hate her but who was actually really kind, realistic and sensible.

In brief she asked me some of the normal stuff – where I lived, worked, whether and how long married etc and, of course, why was I considering adoption. When I said (a little gruffly) that I had had 6 miscarriages she was immediately very kind, but on discovering that the last one was this month, suggested it may be a bit soon for me to be embarking on this process.

Well, even I have to admit she does have a point. On the other hand, it’s not as though we waited until after the 6th miscarriage to ever consider adoption. It has been there as a possible option for a long time.

We talked about that a bit.

How the effect of the miscarriages is cumulative, and it really does take time for you to accept that it is looking less and less likely that I will ever “carry to term.” (“Carry to term” is very euphemistic – strange that I feel the need for a euphemistic term to deal with something so joyful. I guess it has fewer and fewer joyful connotations for me.) Eventually, almost imperceptibly I have reached that point.

Anyway, I said that at the age of 43 I was worried that failing to get started on with the process would just mean that I would be too old for ‘them’ to consider me.

She could appreciate my concerns. Obviously if I was thinking of a newborn* well, that might be (pause for me to fill the space). . . but she couldn’t see why at my age a toddler would be a problem.

What can I say? To be honest I was absolutely over the moon when she said this – I really don’t know how realistic it is to hope for a toddler – or even what she means by toddler, but the thought of having a young child – OMG – I really am filling up again. . . and yes, yes, I know I am totally jumping the gun here, there are hundreds of hurdles yet, but let a girl (OK, old woman) dream for a moment!!

Anyway, the point she was trying to make was that I needed to get over the grieving process first, and she is so right. I know this is true.

But is it wrong of me to use the hope of adoption as a way of getting over the grief? So much of the grief is about never being able to have a child. Not necessarily my biological child, but a child to love and nurture and support and watch grow until it is a grown up. The whole thing. I could write all that stuff down, but how can I list all the things I want to do with my child(ren)?

(By the way for the best post ever on this, read this - http://knocked.typepad.com/knocked_upknocked_down/2006/07/grappling_with_.html - Jill, you blew me away with how fantastically you expressed all this. I can't say how grateful I am.)

I think I continued (and would continue still) to miscarry over and over, even when the doctors are saying it’s my age, my eggs are cooked, my uterus mashes embryos . . . I continue because the ONLY way to get over all this grief is by finally having the baby. Somehow. And adoption is certainly one way to do that.

Ironically, of course, oh-so-long ago, when I was in my 20’s, with so many unwanted children in the world, and the human population (I considered) out of control, I used to be one of those unbearable people who thought that adoption was the only defensible way to have children.

Oh how the sins of the past come home to roost. Or something like that.

You have to laugh, really.

*Lots unsaid here, and for the benefit of non-UK readers, it is as good as impossible to adopt babies in this country. Certainly at my age. Most of the children up for adoption are basically children that have been taken into the state’s care system because they are deemed ‘at risk’ – from abuse and/or neglect. It is actually heartbreaking. But this does mean that babies are very rare, as even the most sad case rarely has her children taken into care at birth. I can hardly write this, it is all so incredibly tragic, both for the children and their mothers. It almost seems like schadenfreude to be getting excited about adoption under such circumstances.

Stop the world

2006-07-25T09:02:00.000+01:00

Fabulous, this just gets better.

Still spotting, but I really believe this will stop soon. After all, I’m only just into my 4th week – I thought it was longer. Seems like much longer.

But at least I don’t have colitis. My brother had it, and had to have his whole colon removed, years ago. When I had intense, screaming pains in my lower abdomen on Saturday, I thought that was what it might be.

So I went to my GP today.

No, it’s too low to be my colon – almost certainly a ‘low level pelvic infection’. (Low level? What the hell does high level feel like?) He prescribed antibiotics and so much ibuprofen I probably won’t feel a thing for weeks. So much for acupuncture and herbs, I suppose. Should I sack the acupuncturist?

Always assuming the doctor is right, of course, and it’s not my colon.

As a little PS, following emotional outburst to the GP about how MISERABLE I am after all these miscarriages, he said “don’t come back and see me until you have spoken to social services about adoption. Don’t leave it any longer, or your age may prevent you even adopting”.

My poor GP has a box of tissues on his desk and I got through 2 or 3 in the space of about 10 minutes. Once I start . . .

Honestly, I sometimes think that if there was nothing to stop me I would cry for hours and hours. And then some.

Please make it all stop. I really want it all to stop now.

If only so I don’t write any more miserable posts. I am so fed up with myself.

I know if I were reading this by someone else I would tell her to try and be kind to herself, to do nice things . . . but I am finding it all so hard. I feel like my confidence has all just leaked away over the months.

I find it hard to socialise, to go to work. To call anyone is next to impossible.

I wrote most of this post yesterday, but then blogger-dot-com was down, so I couldn’t post it. But I did email the county adoption services, just asking them to send more info.

I could definitely love an adopted child. No question about that. And I am beginning to really like the idea – even if the child is a bit older. But how am I ever going to convince the agencies that I would be a worthy mother, when there seems to be so much against me, I am so old, and inside I am so, so fallible? And so, so sad?

Pins and herbs

2006-07-14T17:16:00.000+01:00

I have just read a post by Beagle http://luckbeababy.blogspot.com/ (who has a nearly identical-looking blog to mine – quite disconcerting!)
She talks about her dissatisfaction with her acupuncturist, and I was just wondering if anyone else had any good TCM stories?
I feel like a mug, because after (well, during) m/c #6 I finally walked into the little Chinese ‘Ever Well’ centre in the little town where I work. I booked a ‘free’ consultation, which I attended last Friday. I nearly blogged about it in anger on my return . . . this is why:

I arrived for my appointment to find the receptionist putting out herb concoctions onto paper plates. I was asked to fill in a VERY brief form, mostly asking for address, phone numbers, daytime phone number, evening phone number, etc etc with a gap about this big [_________] to explain what the ‘problem’ was. I filled the space with ‘recurring miscarriage’ but due to lack of space then had to fill in the dates of each one in the margin of the form.
I duly passed my form to the receptionist, who passed it to the doctor who had disappeared out the back somewhere.

A couple of minutes later the two reappeared to ask me to clarify. What did ‘recurring’ mean? Did I mean that I had had a miscarriage on each of the 6 dates? Did ‘July 06’ mean now? Well, yes.
Unfortunately neither of them speaks English very well, though the receptionist ‘translates’ for the doctor continually. So we had some confusion.

The doctor made sympathetic noises about the miscarriages. I think she thought I was totally weird, as I was completely unemotional. Completely. Even I thought I was weird.

She checked my pulse, on both wrists (which I thought a bit odd, but Beagle says this is basic stuff, so I am glad now) and she looked at my tongue.

She then pronounced her verdict.
I need stronger Qi. I must not prognate (I did warn you her English is not too good) for at least 3 months, in fact until she says I am ready. When I do prognate, I MUST NOT WORK. I MUST NOT DO ANYTHING. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. ONLY IF I AGREE TO THIS WILL SHE AGREE TO HELP ME. (Muggins here nods. Muggins agrees to anything really, if she can have the baby.)

Pause for an aside for practical thinking people who have to work: Bearing in mind that once I know I am pregnant, if I get HCG tests in weeks 5 and 6 which are already agreed to, it would be unlikely that I would actually need to take more than 2 weeks off work in practice. Of course, if it turned out that this bonkers Chinese woman can fix me, I would gladly take a leave of absence. But lets not worry about that at the moment.

Then . . . acupuncture session and it seems the herbs (you remember - the ones they were preparing as I arrived) were especially for ME (they are clearly psychic) and I also need to take 2 lots of different pills (round black ones) – 8 of them 3 times a day. As I leave, the total cost of this ‘free’ consultation has been . . . £104. OMG.

Am I stupid, or is this stuff worth it? Your opinions and experiences much appreciated!

A history lesson - How everything has a reason.

2006-07-13T16:58:00.000+01:00

Why I have no baby (maybe) and I may take this post down. It scares me a little.

If everything happens for a reason, maybe this will explain.

My birthday, as we know, is in July, so I was just 16 when I went into the 6th form of school and, driven by a strong desire to travel, even live abroad, I chose to study languages.

I chose to take 4 ‘A’ levels (the exams you take to get into University, among other things) – in English, French, German and Art (Spanish followed much later, and really is another story entirely).

It was therefore inevitable that I had quite a bit of contact with D, the “native speaker” German Language Assistant, whose brief was to give German conversation lessons to students of German throughout the school.

He was 21. An intense, highly intelligent, slightly depressive, singing, guitar-playing German with perfect English. We used to walk together in the countryside and talk and talk and talk. In English. To be honest, I didn’t find him wildly attractive – at the time I had boyfriends, rather wild boys with teenage angst and teenage hormones.

It took me a long time to fall in love with D. Nearly a year. And longer still before we slept together for the first time. We spent some of the summer of the year between my lower and upper sixth year together in Germany. He wrote songs for me. He was a poet, a soul mate, my twin. I looked up to him, admired him. I couldn’t bear to be away from him. He adored me. Our love was perfect.

He was only contracted to work at my school for a year, so the following year, as I studied for A levels, he and I wrote letters of ideal, untouchable love. The idealism of John and Yoko’s perfect love mirrored our feelings for each other. That December John was shot dead. D heard it from me as I wailed hysterically down the school corridors while he was on a visit. Ever the drama queen. Still only 17.

The following summer I was visiting D in Germany when my A level results came out. I telephoned my parents from a service station on the Autobahn outside Munich, and had them open the envelope.

Ironically, and to everyone’s surprise but my own, I had almost failed German. My University place was no longer secure.

With no university place, D asked me to stay with him, get a job, a house, get married, have kids.
I had just turned 18.
I was spinning.
He didn’t press me.

My father phoned, again and again, and in my own teenage hormonal angst-ridden state I told him I may stay and marry D. Frantically he made more calls on my behalf to Unis. A few days passed before he phoned to say I had had 2 offers. One of them even allowed me to carry on studying German.

Now what was I to do?

D continued not to press me. It was my decision, and I had to be the one to make it.

(Many years later I asked him why, when he had wanted it so much, had he not pressed me to stay? I told him that I had understood from his actions that he did not mind too much either way. Tragically I was wrong – he had just wanted to be quite sure that I “followed my own way”.

It was a heavy responsibility but I knew I had always wanted to go to university, though in another odd twist, largely because I wanted to study languages and spend a year of my course abroad.

So I went, firm in the belief that D and I would continue. Completely convinced that ours was an ideal, perfect love; nothing could ever taint or destroy it.

I was so naïve, so wrong. I was cruel and thoughtless and hurtful, I really cannot write about the details, but on his 24th birthday that very November, D and I had a heart-breaking scene from which we could never recover. It took me a long time to realise. I really was very naïve.

D returned to Germany and the following Easter I visited him. The tables were turned on me; I finally understood how much I had hurt him.

It was over, but we didn’t leave each other. We still valued how close we had been. No-one else could ever compare.

But, heartbroken that I would never be the mother of his children, the one thing he had dreamed, D made the decision to have a vasectomy. The medical profession tried hard to dissuade him – he was in his early 20’s, how could he make a decision like this – but he went ahead anyway.

How did I cope with that? With the blame?

I thought of it as a mini-suicide, and explained it as his way of destroying a part of himself to keep himself sane. Suicide, it seems, was a part of his make-up. His sister had killed herself when he was just 16. Many years later, suffering from mental health problems, his brother was killed when he jumped out of a train window. A panic reaction when he realised he was on the wrong train and the guards were checking tickets.

So maybe a vasectomy at 25 was not the worst that might have happened to D.
A small death that saved him from going all the way.

I know I sound heartless, and it isn’t meant like that. Not at all. There was a lot of pain to get through. For D, I think I was in some ways just more pain in his life.

Our relationship went through many changes over the years. We remained very, very close for a long time. D had a heart attack, just 5 or 6 years ago and we rowed bitterly over his smoking. He refused to acknowledge it was bad for his heart, or had anything to do with the heart-attack. The smoking row happened over the weekend he got married, and turned things very sour between us.

He got married 3 days after 9/11 to a woman he had lived with for at least 16 years. . Apparently she never wanted children. But I know he did.

And after a long and I have to admit, bitter silence, we have exchanged text messages recently. I wanted to know that he was OK – not dead of another heart attack. He is, apparently, fully recovered and playing badminton regularly.

On a very sad day I texted him the news of my 6 miscarriages, and received from him a very kind text in return:

“Oh Viv, I can only try and figure what you two had and have to go through with that, I am sorry. I wish you strength. I think of you.”

I didn’t expect him to be so kind after all the bitterness. Whatever we did in the past, however in love we once were, it all did happen for a reason – he and I would have destroyed each other. He was simply far too intense, far too prone to misery and depression, even anger. I could not have withstood that.

What I finally found was support and love of a stronger and healthier kind with R. I never feel in danger with R.

But still, a little bit of me really believes that I have no right to have babies, when I could have done with D, and I chose not to . . . and he chose never to have them, if not with me.

43 or . . . “it’s my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to”

2006-07-06T13:14:00.000+01:00

I was trying not to be depressed – after all it’s just another day, really, and I am only a day older than I was yesterday. And as I always so cheerily say to people who grumble about being old (usually they are in their 20’s) ‘in 10 years time you will be amazed you were ever this young’. Yep, when I am 53 I will be amazed I was ever this young, but I am horrified to be just 10 years away from 53. OMG. Really, what happened?

So I drove to work trying to be upbeat (yes, today I am in the office – in a paranoid moment I thought they would think I was skiving if I chose to work from home on my birthday) – anyway, as I drove to work they played Bob Dylan ‘ She belongs to me’ on the radio, and I burst into tears.

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/belongs.html - here are the lyrics, in case you want them. “She never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall”. Oh dear, Bob Dylan is truly the greatest songwriter.

But life goes on. I stumble along.

Yesterday was my Canadian SIL’s 40th birthday and the four of us went out to dinner. Fabulous food, and a really enjoyable evening – very rare for R and his brother to go out together, but we all had such a good time I think we will do it again. My SIL has a 7-year-old son who is ‘in the autistic spectrum’ – so hard work, but they adore him. In slightly drunken state at the end of the evening when she and I were alone, she told me they have been trying to get pregnant again for 4 years. No reason diagnosed for the lack of success – tubes were thought blocked, then told they are just ‘quite convoluted’ which sounds a bit strange to me. They suggested she had maybe had some kind of infection, and she clearly thinks they were insinuating that she had caught something from someone other than her husband. She started (very unnecessarily) assuring me that this simply couldn’t be the case. It also turns out that she sees the same consultant (Dr Nice) as me! How funny – I wonder if he has made the connection! The Hopeless Infertile Family. I told her about the 6th miscarriage. It was a relief to tell her. She was very nice about it and didn’t say anything stupid at all.

So that was all good really.

Then there was The Hospital Appointment yesterday.
What a shambles.
First, as I was in SUCH a state last Weds, I didn’t take in the date for the new appointment – it just got written on the card. It actually said 3 July, but it looked JUST LIKE 5 July – so clever me turned up on the wrong day. I was prepared to go away, but the receptionist was really rude and asked me to wait and the waiting area was rammed full of women with enormous bumps and I went to sit down, and ended up crying again. It took lots of very sympathetic nurses to track down Dr Nice – in Theatre, but said he would see me anyway when he came out. Nearly 2 hours later I got my meeting.

So here in summary:

hCG now at 27.

No point doing D&C, as would be v unlikely to be able to get enough tissue for analysis and unless bleeding is prolonged. . . I don’t think it will be this time, to be honest. I can put up with 10 days or 2 weeks or so. As long as it is over before I go on holiday.

IVF – I asked about whether it would be worth my while considering IVF with PGD – he thinks not, as is really only useful if we knew that my miscarriages are due to a particular genetic or chromosomal problem and it is not really possible to just screen for ‘normal’ embryos. No, of course, that made sense.

MTHFR – I was a bit disconcerted to find he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about with this one. Then he seemed to catch on, and we discussed getting high dose folic acid – he said that he would prescribe me this if I wanted it anyway, without any tests, as he was happy it wouldn’t do me any harm.

He is very sceptical about my Harley Street doctor’s 80% claim. So am I really – I never had the results from his clinic to back it up. He definitely thinks I should NOT take any higher a dose of steroids than I have been prescribed so far.

Vitamins – possibly selenium may help. Can’t harm, so take them too.

Acupuncture (I wanted his view on this) – definitely helps some people with some complaints, so may be worth trying – highly unlikely to do any harm and certainly safer to try this than do more steroids. (He isn’t keen on steroids! I don’t blame him, but I really had to try, and will almost certainly give it one more go.)

In essence we are no closer to finding a reason or a cure for my RPL than we were 2 years ago, or whenever the hell I started seeing the quacks. He clearly doesn't think there is any intervention which will work, but understands my need to 'leave no stone unturned'. When I finally give up, I need to believe I tried everything.

Where does this leave me?

More than three years older than when I started trying for a baby, and finally facing – or at least beginning to think - the unthinkable.

It could be never.

So, what shall I have for birthday tea?

If they knew, they wouldn't, would they?

2006-07-04T11:19:00.000+01:00

First – to “my American readers” – Happy Independence Day. Judging by the standard of the British performances in the World Cup and at Wimbledon I think you guys did the right thing! Just kidding, but have a good holiday.

For a couple of days I have been “working from home”. It is something I am able to do very occasionally, when I am not involved in day-to-day meetings and have a lot of writing to do, it is just more efficient. At present I have a lot of writing to do, and it has suited me very well being at home. I am OK, but not very stable. It is just that things will set me off quite easily. And I don’t want all that pity and, as I have said, I worry that people will think I am stupid for continuing to put myself through this instead of accepting that at 42 I am past having kids. Get over it.

I think not telling my work colleagues is a kind of self-protection. Last year I went through the scenario where I did tell them what had happened. I had nearly 2 weeks off after my 4th m/c last July/August. They sent me a big bunch of flowers. But, though after 2 weeks I was well enough to come back to work, (actually I felt a bit of a fraud) I was by no means ‘over it’.

Then I did it all over again in October (# 5). That time only my closest colleague and my manager knew, though it would have been very easy for anyone to guess - I was off at medical appointments so often. It was nearly 2 months after that, just after Christmas that everything really kicked off . . . lots of “complaints” apparently from the team about my work. It was so awful. I felt so miserable that they could be so harsh, and the more so because they KNEW what had happened. I think other people just assume you do get over it. Short memory syndrome.

So this time I am being as completely brave as I can be. I am here in work, and I think I am doing OK.

But then this:

I got married in October 2004. 2 weeks before me, a close colleague (J) also married, and 2 weeks after me yet another colleague (D) got married. A real rash of weddings in our company that October! J had been in her relationship for about 8 years, and at her wedding was already 4 – 5 months pregnant. Her little boy is lovely, though I don’t see much of him. J is a good friend to me, and knows about the m/c’s. In fact, though at the time she didn’t know, she was with me for the first one, as we were together on a work trip to the States. Then today, I was in the shared kitchen by my office making some tea, and D walks in, smiles broadly at me, and says ‘have you heard the news’, cupping her tummy significantly.

Brave brave brave. It’s not her fault. She doesn’t know. It did help that I had actually guessed a couple of weeks ago. So I told her I had guessed, and we laughed about it. Clever me, I can laugh with a newly pregnant woman.

Her baby is due on Christmas day. I think I managed all the right faces, all the right noises.

But all I am thinking is – this leaves only me, and I have a big thick pad between my legs. And I am still feeling sorry for myself.

Very wrong world. What's going on?

2006-07-01T11:37:00.000+01:00

I got a hell of a shock this morning – I hadn’t checked on Jill for 2 or 3 days, and just popped over to find out that she has miscarried too. Number 6 too. Poor Jill, this is just so wrong. I was completely convinced hers would be OK.

So now Nikole and Jill follow Thalia and Pamplemousse and I really do feel a bit overwhelmed by the injustice of it all.

And last night I started spotting. I am just so glad I was expecting it, instead of it coming as a horrible shock like before.

This time I don’t have to rush around thinking ‘is it or isn’t it?’. I know this is a miscarriage. Not a bit of 'normal' bleeding in pregnancy' which lots of (other) women have.

This time there is no wondering if it it was me. If it was something I did in the last couple of days, because I already know my HCG was already shot to pieces last weekend. And I hadn't done anything.

For once I am waiting to bleed instead of dreading seeing spotting.

It does give me more questions about just how early I am really losing these pregnancies, though. When, on other occasions I didn’t start to really bleed until 8 weeks, I just thought that meant I had miscarried at 8 weeks, but now it looks like it may well have been over long before that.

I don’t really know if this means much.

Just trying my best really.

2006-06-30T10:16:00.000+01:00

Now is probably not a good time to be planning my next baby, is it? No, Vivien, that would be very silly.

But, do you know what?

Here's a choice:
I could be the woman who had 6 miscarriages, and gave up and never had a baby.

Or I could be the woman who had a baby (oh, and do you know, she had 6 miscarriages before she had her baby?)

Am I sounding mad yet?
It's just, what is the point of going through all this if I give up and NEVER have a baby?

Yes, I expect you are all right, and I should be grieving and taking some time off. I have no doubt it will hit me later – it certainly did before. But I am not sure you can choose the timing. If I sit home now and cry, will that stop it hitting me later? I doubt it.

And I am too afraid that if I get into that . . . how will I face getting pregnant again?

If it hurts too much to lose it, how can I keep putting myself through it?

I have to focus on getting the one that DOES survive.

I must be going mad, I am even thinking of IVF, and getting the little embryos scanned first. But I am running away with myself here.

I guess I need to start bleeding first. What do you think?

God this limbo is shit. I wonder if I am still clinging to the hope that the HCG was wrong and the next one will say 3000 or something and everyone will smile and say ‘wow, there’s a first – we told you stranger things have happened!’

Cuckoo.

I wonder if there’s an asylum I can check myself into.

Well it makes sense to me that I can’t grieve when I am not even bleeding. A theoretical baby followed by a theoretical miscarriage.

Lovely.

I’m scared. I wish it wouldn't happen.

It isn’t really happening (or – “la la la la – I can’t hear you”)

2006-06-29T09:56:00.000+01:00

Well, let’s try this.

With HCG levels so pathetically low, I can hardly claim to have been pregnant, can I?
I don’t want to go through some big emotional trauma over this.
There was no BABY. No point behaving as though it was a BABY. That would just be silly and sentimental of me.

I want it finished and behind me.

I don’t want to bleed. Blood is too real.

Certain thoughts keep coming back. . .

Why didn’t I meet R years ago? Why was I already 38 when I met him? Why do I have to be 43 on Thursday? I have never looked forward to a birthday with more dread.

I gave up smoking over 10 years ago. Smoking is disgusting I can’t believe I did it so long. Perhaps that screwed all my eggs.

Why could my mum have 2 children in her 40s and I can't?

What if I can never have a baby?

I just don't know what to do.

Disclaimer - I am not responsible

2006-06-28T17:40:00.000+01:00

I need to write this, but don't know if I can stay rational.
HCG on Friday was 88.
HCG on Monday was 76.
That's it then.

It was beautifully handled, though I suppose if they had just announced my results over a tannoy in the waiting room, it makes no fucking difference. No baby, baby.
A stupid f-ing registrar called me in. Let's call him Dr F/wit.
"Dr Nice is currently with another patient - he will be here soon. I thought I could just take some notes" (opens my file, clearly for the first time).
Me: "I just need my HCG results".
"Ah - your results - well . . . (reads out my LH and FSH results from tests in February. Starts telling me they look pretty good)
Me - "No, the blood tests I have just had done. HCG levels. (me now pointing at the pieces of paper across the desk - I can see them, just can't read them).
Dr F/wit: Ah these results?
Me "Yes (reading them myself and realising).
Dr F/wit: blah blah are you due to have a scan blah blah you can't read too much into these figures.
Me: Blank. Don't speak. Don't cry. Finally: I would like to see Dr Nice.
Dr F/wit: Yes, I will go and see if he's available. Scarpers.

2 or 3 minutes. R tries to find me a tissue. How did we forget that? Sobbing now that the fuckwit has left the room.

Enter Dr Nice with Nurse Really Kind and Dr F/wit loitering with the grace to look embarrassed. What an asshole. I always thought to study medicine you had to have a brain. Clearly some slip through the net.

More crap though. Why is it that they seem to want you to continue clinging onto a lost cause? I mean, really - this couldn't be much more conclusive. Have you EVER heard of HCG levels FALLING and then a normal pregnancy outcome? Well HAVE YOU FUCK?

Dr Nice:
Blah blah blood tests blah blah clinic next week blah blah confirm this is what's happening blah blah let's not rush to interfere with a D&C blah see if it just happens naturally blah fucking blah.

Me: Yes, but we know (sob) what is (sob)happening. And I (sob) really don't want (sob) to bleed for 4 weeks (sob) again like the last time.

Dr Nice: we-ell, let's wait to be sure. Stranger things have happened.

Me. Blank. Sob. What a load of crap. I am NOT going to be talked into believing this. It would be easy and lovely but pointless and ultimately even more painful.

We have scheduled another blood test for Friday and a follow-up appointment on Tuesday. I think that's what happened, anyway.

So I drove home. Half an hour. Now and then I stopped crying.
Now I am having a glass of wine.
I am stopping all this STUPID FUCKING MEDICATION. THERE IS NO POINT.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?
I AM FEELING COMPLETELY SHIT AND I WISH I NEVER HAD TO GO TO WORK OR EVEN OUT OF THE HOUSE EVER AGAIN. WHY DO I KEEP THINKING OTHER PEOPLE MUST THINK I AM THE FUCKWIT TO KEEP TRYING IN THE FACE OF ALL THIS FAILURE? SHE WON'T HAVE A BABY. CAN'T SHE READ THE WRITING ON THE WALL?

No, I am stupid. And old. And childless. Possibly forever. And I will stop now because I am crying too hard to type.

Thank you for listening.

Today's the day, then

2006-06-28T10:02:00.000+01:00

At 4pm I have my appointment to find out these Beta HCG results. Who knows.

Last night when I went to bed I just broke down – big huge sobs and loads of tears – real hormone crash stuff. Completely convinced this one is going, and devastated that I will have to go through yet another m/c. Poor R, what was he to do? Just reminded me that we really are doing all we can this time around, and that he is still positive. And lots of sympathy that he isn’t the one having to go through it so directly. (Not that I doubt it is just as hard for him).

Have we really done everything though? I just have at the back of my mind this nagging doubt - I didn’t start taking the Prednisolone until after the positive test, which obviously would not have been in time for the implantation and I just DON’T UNDERSTAND how, if implantation occurs approximately 8 DPO, then how would I be at 5 – 6 weeks before I miscarried or showed any signs? Why are there not more answers? Why can’t they fix me?

Then, this morning I woke up and (sorry!) took my temperature, which was reassuringly high (36.62C) and I actually felt quite sick – not very sick, but definitely a bit. And I have the nasty taste back in my mouth. Nothing shifts it. So, with these pathetic strands of hope I shall try and hold myself together until this afternoon.

Bad day

2006-06-27T09:51:00.000+01:00

Am having a bad day.
I just cannot make myself believe this pregnancy is going to last.
I have been back to read Aliza’s http://babyfruit.typepad.com entries in October last year, to try and gain some comfort. I know she was thinking she would miscarry, and then, obviously, didn’t.

But it’s not really working.

I just want to go home from work and cry and cry and cry.

This is not fair.
How very grown up. I sound like a spoilt child.

Life on the knife edge

2006-06-26T09:33:00.000+01:00

I have continued to chart my BBT since getting the positive tests, although I really don’t know if the progesterone pessaries would be enough to keep my temperature up. Anyway, ever since the positive test my temperature has been around 36.65C – never dropping lower than 36.55C. Then today I checked the readout and nearly went into freefall. 36.36C.

I lay there for a while, just thinking how it was irrefutable. If I had assumed the Prog. supplements had been keeping my temperature up, there was absolutely no excuse for it to drop like that. There is only one inevitable conclusion. It’s over.

Or a bad reading?

Clutching at straws I put the thermometer back in my mouth, jamming it firmly under my tongue. Another 60 seconds. A different reading. 36.65C. Relief, disbelief. Trying to believe that in my half-asleep state the first reading had been affected by my having my mouth slightly open or something.

For good measure, 5 minutes later I tried a third time. 36.55C. I feel like I won the two out of three gamble.

But why can’t I just wake up and be sick? I keep searching for symptoms – I couldn’t drink my tea this morning, though the first sip seemed fine. Or am I just imagining it? I do have some nausea this morning, but it may just be the stress of having some idiot lorry-driver pull out right in front of me on a roundabout. I leaned on the horn and he just gave me the finger out of the driver’s window. I felt my stress levels rocket. Real best of British. And I am one of the few people I know who can get travel sick even when driving myself. I have even managed morning sickness (the real thing - actually throwing up) while I was bleeding heavily in the middle of a miscarriage.

So I have a mixture of nausea (very mild) and heartburn, a funny taste in my mouth and I am off tea. Today. And all of these come and go. Quite a lot of the time I just imagine they are still there, and I have that nagging feeling that deep down I know already that this is not going to be. . .

But - I am trying really hard to be positive. 6 weeks ago I was not pregnant. Now I am. I think I am. I think I still am.

There are 2 days to go till they tell me what the Beta HCG is doing.
If it is doing the right thing I will be ecstatic.

I think.

Playing all my cards

2006-06-22T18:23:00.000+01:00

I am being a bit evil. I am getting them all to run around me – well eventually.

I think I am 5w exactly today. I am not very good at this sort of thing because having this longish cycle (about 31 days normally) I am never quite sure when to start calculating from, but I can be pretty sure I ovulated on June 1st, and today is the 22nd. So, have I got that right?

I have the 1st scan scheduled, appointment now made for July 8th (yes, a Saturday) in a hospital in Wimbledon (yes – Ladies bloody Finals day – is this really happening?) with Dr X, whom I normally see in his Harley Street clinic. By my calculations I will be 7W3D by then. (I think a lack of heartbeat would be pretty conclusive.)

But then, obviously, I have worked myself up into a complete panic and have been throwing my toys around a bit to get the NHS to monitor me at least a bit, beforehand. The lovely Dr Nice at the hospital, for example. Surely he will help me?

So - there have been lots of rather stressed phone-calls (the doctors surgery told me to call back and speak to a doctor, the doctor told me to call the hospital; The hospital twice put me on hold so long the line went dead; when I finally spoke to Dr Nice’s secretary she coldly informed me he was away and said “have you discussed this with your midwife?”. That left me stuck for words for a moment or two. (What midwife. I haven’t ever got past 8 weeks. Are you trying to make me feel inadequate. HAVE YOU NOT HEARD ANYTHING I HAVE JUST TOLD YOU?

But another 2 calls this morning, and I have got there. I have scheduled a blood test for HCG levels for tomorrow morning at the hospital, then a follow-up one on Monday. Then on Thursday 28th June I have an appointment with Dr Nice at the hospital – a routine follow-up which was actually scheduled before Christmas. Bit of a coincidence really that I should finally see him now. Anyway, by Thursday he should have my HCG results, which I hope at least will say so far so good. Please?

OK, try a bit harder PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can these results say so far so good? None of this “within acceptable limits” rises in HCG that they tried to palm me off with the last time.

I really am a mess, and the word ‘rollercoaster’ never was more apposite. Tuesday I was a headcase, tears and edgy all day. Yesterday you would have thought I had won the lottery. Everyone’s best friend and life and soul of the party. Today I am doing Tuesday again.

This is just not in my control, is it?

Definitely positive test - definitely negative me.

2006-06-20T12:55:00.000+01:00

I had a digital test left over, and now, two days past my last possible period due date, I thought it safe enough to try.
Kindly it gave me the message I needed to see. No more squinting at lines. Just ‘pregnant’. R hugged and kissed me, but I can’t shake off this ambivalence, though I tried to get excited too. I kept looking at it as though it could tell me whether this time there will be a baby.

The thing is, I have been here before. 5 times. I know I am doing different stuff this time.
- NEW – daily Heparin injections
- NEW – BIG doses of Progesterone (400mg pessary am and pm - v messy)
- Nearly New – Prednisolone tablets daily
- Plus the aspirin
- And the folic acid of course

I have never seen a heartbeat.
I don’t know that there has never been one, but then I was never even offered a scan before 7 – 8 weeks, by which time it had been scheduled to check whether the bleeding I had had meant bad news. And it always did.

Until the 5th m/c gave me much more information, made it clear to me that although I was only spotting a little and the full-on bleeding didn’t take place until 7-8 weeks, in reality the fetus didn’t made it past about 6.

And Dr X wants me to come in on ‘week 6 -7’ for my first scan.

I would have thought I would be desperate to see something, but I find myself wanting to put off the day of my appointment because I want to KNOW. I don’t want to go all the way to London to be told it’s still a bit early – come back next week.

I want to see that heartbeat SO MUCH. I will feel reassured, though I know that’s not the end of the story, but I would feel better to get that far. And if I put off the date, and I have started spotting, then the scan can either reassure me or confirm my fears.

In the meantime poor R is very upset about the timing of his (our) holiday. We have planned it with 2 other couples, so R can’t pull out as he is the qualified International Mountain Leader, and winter ML with skills none of the others have. He really does need to be on one end of the rope! But now he is panicking that I may m/c while he is away.

Personally I would be glad just to get that far. The end of July seems like years away to me.

Not very proud of myself

2006-06-18T14:52:00.000+01:00

This is going to be a bit hard. Home alone this weekend and here's what I have done:

Went shopping yesterday.

Bit of food (high protein stuff, and vegetables)
Body Shop cocoa body butter (the top of my back is peeling after a very out-of-character, embarrassing sunburn last weekend)
2 pairs of cut-off trousers - cheap ones. (Just in time for the change in the weather!)
Book by Lesley Regan (St Mary's Hospital, London) about miscarriage. 'What every woman should know' apparently.

Then I came home and:

Started reading the miscarriage book lying on the bed.
Distracted, I updated my fertility / temperature chart book noting the test dates and start dates for the drug treatment that I have now started.
Read some more of the miscarriage book.
Fell asleep
Awoken by the phone ringing. Ran at full tilt down the stairs, thinking it might be R. Also momentarily thinking I may trip and end this pregnancy even more prematurely. Nope - an agency doing market research on shopping habits. Would I take part? No, sorry.
Spent time examining and re-examining my current and previous charts, to try and suss out exactly when my period would have been due. I seem to have a slightly long luteal phase - about 15/16 days. Worked myself up (again) into believing my period will start this weekend.
Got v depressed about the Lesley Regan book. I am a vulnerable woman who is easily taken in by a doctor offering unproven protocol. Understandable but ultimately stupid and weak.
Watched quite a lot of really, really awful TV.
Gave myself my third clexane injection. It isn't easy to stick a needle in yourself and I am not really getting any better. My stomach is looking a mess already, as I am so hesitant I seem to stick the needle in and pull it out immediately so have to stick it back in. More holes than necessary.
Changed the bed because Roger (the cat) had walked on the duvet with muddy paws.
Locked the chickens away after dark. 4 of them (new ones) have still not realised they need to go INSIDE at night. Put them in manually. (Yes - always wash in anti-bacterial handwash after dealing with the chickens).
Woke up this morning to find Roger on the bed. Paws lovely and clean - fresh duvet cover a real mess!
Breakfast - tomatoes and mushrooms on toast.
Radio 4 and net surfing all morning till now (3pm).
Spent ages updating my (rather morbid) excel chart which shows each miscarriage and cycle since November 2003.
Added a new sheet to aforementioned chart - 'Pregnancy #6'. Added expected dates of demise.
Expected date of spotting - 2nd July.
Expected date of big bleed starting, approx 11th July.
Definite date of my birthday - July 6th.
Date of holiday booked to go high level alpine walking, including glacier crossing: 29th July. If I don't miscarry, I would be in my 11th week. I will not go of course. If I do miscarry, what are the chances I will be fit enough to go?

Please, please stop obsessing.

I think I will try and do some gardening and take my mind off all of this. If only it were that easy.

The cat smirketh on

2006-06-16T09:56:00.000+01:00

Here’s the story.

On Wednesday after posting I spent the day feeling rather flat. I couldn’t say that I had been SURE, but I really had thought I probably was pregnant, so it that pee-stick was such a let-down. I got home from work, watered the tomatoes and cucumbers etc in the green house, did a bit of garden ‘pottering’ (mostly admiring the deep pink peonies, the roses, and all the other flowers that are currently brightening up life. And then I rather gracelessly flopped in front of the TV to watch our latest rental DVD – Shadowlands with Anthony Hopkins questioning his faith while falling in love, and Deborah Winger dying of cancer – and both R and I cried copiously, though we had both seen it at least twice before. Very therapeutic. Also, seeing as I wasn’t pregnant I had a glass of wine with the film!

Then, as we went to bed but because I am an obsessive, I just picked up the morning’s peestick, put it under a very bright light (the one over the mirror in the bathroom) and could JUST ABOUT make out a very very faint second line. Now I know they say to ignore anything that appears after 10 minutes, but I was grasping at straws here.

Also, in spite of the 10 minute advice, I have never seen a pee stick change from negative to positive before. I started thinking that maybe I should retest. Maybe I had just misjudged things.

Of course, for the first time in probably 2 years, I didn’t have a spare ‘early’ test in the house, so I couldn’t retest on Thursday morning.

So – yesterday at lunchtime I popped into the chemist and bought myself a double pack. I planned to leave the first test till this morning, but in fact ended up using one last night, because apart from being an obsessive, I am also Mrs Impatient. What the hell, I thought, I can always buy more peesticks, but you can't buy patience.

So - after a long spell of NOT peeing, (because, still being 2 days before my period is due, I should really have used the morning stuff) – I tried again.

You have guessed already.

It is really faint still

But there is a second line.

So now what happens?

I don’t think I have ever felt this ambivalent about something I should be pleased about. I am pleased, but at the same time I am so scared too. Actually I keep nearly bursting into tears, which in itself worries me as I think maybe I am having a hormone dip already and this “pregnancy” won’t last through the weekend. As we all know, most pregnancies appear to end before the woman even realises she is pregnant – swept away in what she thinks is a normal period.

So now I am scared of the weekend, and of course R is away running a mountain marathon in the extreme far north of Scotland. He flies to Inverness today and won't be back until Monday night. It’s OK - I can be a wreck all on my own – I don’t need him to help!

I shall cuddle that cat I think.

And next time, if I am wondering about whether I am pregnant, I will ask the cat, and save the money on peesticks.

“No ticket for you, my girl” – or - “Never trust a smiling cat”

2006-06-14T09:25:00.000+01:00

Well, it makes a change from “not bloody pregnant again this month. Bugger.”

I so nearly dared to say in yesterday’s post that I was feeling positive about a positive this month. There is certainly no doubt that we were TTC at the right time etc etc. I had my surefire symptom of going off tea. For a whole day and a half I just couldn’t drink tea – it tasted disgusting, which really is the only consistent symptom I have ever had for any pregnancy, bizarre as it sounds. But the pee-stick wasn’t having any of it, and my temperature took a drop this morning.

I am so disappointed. R was lovely, and said “never mind, I still believe it will happen. Don’t give up”. But it didn’t quite sound sincere to me. I wanted just to get back in bed and stay there, but I had a presentation to do at 8.30 this morning, so a duvet day really wasn’t an option.

Sometimes another month just seems like an eternity.

Better a second line? Even if not enduring?

2006-06-13T09:24:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I went out to lunch with a friend from work. We are not very close, but roughly the same age and both married without kids. I knew she had fertility ‘issues’ and she knew I had miscarried, but we got to discussing it a bit more.

She told me she had been to the same midlands clinic as me after extensive tests all showing no reason for her infertility. She had tried ICSI, which had been unsuccessful, but had not gone down the IVF route because of the cost. She is actually a bit older than I am. A bit further along the road and has two friends with small children that she is really close to. Sort of kids by proxy.

She asked about me, and I said I had had 5 miscarriages. And that’s when she made the comment:

“Well, at least you can get pregnant”.

It hung in the air a bit.

I was a bit lost for something to say really. I can see from where she is, it must look like success to actually get a positive pregnancy test. I can see that. But it doesn’t feel like success from here. Not at all. That positive pee-stick is your entry ticket to the rollercoaster.

This week I have been SO SORRY about (and for) Pamplemousse and Thalia. How much worse is it to think you have a pregnancy, to have a due date out there, to line up your positive pee-sticks with pride and joy. To have that huge build-up of excitement, and gradually, gradually to let yourself believe it’s true. You are going to have a baby.

And then for it all to f*cking fail. What do you do with THAT?

And yet for me, after 2 pregnancies (obviously both failed) in just 3 cycles between June and October last year I have not even managed to get pregnant at all since. Bizarrely I felt slightly guilty at Murray’s comment on my last post. She was expecting to find a happier ending. I guess at least a bit of action would be something. I admit, it is wearing me down. At the moment I would really like at least the ticket. Actually, of course, I would like a ticket for a different ride this time.

Oh no, I have just visited Nikole, and she has just miscarried too. Another of us. Go visit her?
http://babylust.typepad.com/baby/2006/06/the_day_after.html

Clever cat?

2006-06-07T15:21:00.000+01:00

Thank you for the support re the Christening. It was a bit tearful but I don’t think anyone but R noticed. The baby was asleep throughout.

Now, what do we know about cats? My cat Roger ALWAYS favours my R's lap, but has suddenly changes his colours and jumped on me and settled down to snooze twice yesterday evening.

Is this grasping at straws, or might he (she - sorry, this is the cat with the gender issues) know something I don’t yet? I have heard something about cats behaving strangely having significance, but have no idea really. Any good stories out there?

Had a fabulous weekend with R. We cycled for two days through stunning countryside. On night # one we camped and woke the next morning with stiff backs and achy limbs but climbed back on the bikes to go for the prize – the luxury hotel accommodation with Michelin starred restaurant, amazing 10 course meal (sorry, I know that is immoral, but it was his 40th) and came home after hotel breakfast, a look around lovely Ludlow and then the biggest cream cake I have ever seen! (Not me, R!)

Then back to work on 06/06/06, and things went quickly downhill. L, (colleague currently on maternity) whose pregnancy coincided with my 4th Miscarriage brought in her absolutely gorgeous baby girl, Sophie, to see us at work. I held her for a while and she was so adorable I thought I might turn into one of those mad old women who steal babies. I just kept thinking ‘this should be my baby, my baby, my baby . . . ‘ But she isn’t and I may never have one, and L is 30, beautiful and just 10 weeks after the birth has a flatter stomach than I have ever (or will ever) have. Is life fair? No, we know it’s not. Hey I don’t have space (or technical know-how!) for all the links to you to prove that.

Next it will be Aliza, she will give birth to baby Noa Grace in just over a week. Aliza at Babyfruit was the first ever blog I found, and the reason I started this one. In October last year she and I were both pregnant, both at 5 weeks, and both fearing we were about to go through a 5th miscarriage. I did, but she didn’t. I do wish her well with the birth, and hope that she will finally stop worrying!

My baby. Where’s my baby?

Home for a long weekend

2006-05-26T17:22:00.000+01:00

Whoa - that all got a bit hairy - thank you everyone who left comments. I think we put the world to rights between us. By the way, I did not mean to imply that Juliet (sorry to bandy your name again) was one of the people who didn't react positively to IFs getting pregnant. That was just another branch of my wandering thought process. Sorry again.

The weekend is a long one - Monday is a bank holiday. I am not sorry to have an extra day away from work. Nearly got into another heated conversation this afternoon, but am determined not to let it show any more. If I continue to behave as though I don't care, eventually I believe I won't. And I am beginning to be a lot more 'actively looking' for alternative employment. All in my own time, though.

Sunday brings my (not) favourite - a Christening. I am afraid I am not religious, and (in spite of having had a church wedding, much to the surprise of close friends - and a bit of a long story) I actually find it very hard to do all that stuff. It's to do with personal integrity, honesty. My brother, some years ago, asked me to be godmother to his second daughter. I turned him down because I would have to have said stuff in church (renouncing evil and accepting JC etc) that I just couldn't do with a clear conscience. I still wonder if I should have done it anyway. But Aunty or godmother - I still love her just the same, and would always be there if I were needed.

The Christening this weekend is for the third child of one of R's school friends. He still has a whole bunch of schoolfriends who live quite locally - half of them married each other, so it is quite weird for me. I am the outsider - they haven't all known me since the age of 11. Lots of farmer types, and good fun and friendly enough, but half the time I haven't a clue what or who they are talking about! But R knows how I feel, and we will go because they are his friends whom we haven't seen for ages, but we shan't stay too long because there is a bit of potential for tears, and he does look after me.

So back to more positive things -

the fence to go around the perimeter of our garden was delivered this week, so we can put it up at the weekend and finally plant out the clematis and honeysuckles and various bits that can climb and start covering it up!
I forgot some of the veg in my last post - namely tomatoes, cucumber, bell peppers, garlic and onions (red ones from seed and white and yellow ones from sets) And R's absolute pride and joy - the asparagus bed - though no asparagus until at least next year, when the plants I grew from seed will be 3 year old crowns.
Is this turning into a gardening blog?
Oh who cares!
The delphiniums and foxglove are coming out too, and the peonies look about to burst open.
I think the rain might stop soon! At the risk of being VERY British and talking about the weather WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE SUMMER?

Oh and final last positive thing, it is a little early yet, but dammit, I am going to start TTC this weekend!!!!

Have a good one.

Now I'm clueless too

2006-05-24T18:04:00.000+01:00

I’m not simply an IF, I am a clueless and tactless IF according to Juliet. I have turned her comments over and over, but it isn’t really helping. I certainly didn’t mean my comment as a personal indictment of her situation. Her response certainly felt quite like a personal attack though.
Don't bother getting involved, but if you do want to know what I am talking about you could look at the following link (I am not good at links). My tactless remark is the second comment - Juliet's is the long one, quite a bit further down. http://thalia.typepad.com/thalias_fertility_journey/2006/05/in_answer_to_a_.html#comments

There is lots I could say, particularly that I really don't judge anyone for whether or not they are as lucky as I am. My comment was about my reaction to Thalia's post. That's all. But actually, I think less said the better really. To be honest, I did just wonder whether to ignore it all completely and pretend nothing happened, but out there someone is angry, because I offended her, and I am sorry for that.

The weather is dreary and wet and I feel a bit the same.

I am aware how negative so many of these posts must sound. I think I should list some positive things :

I have recently seen a chiropractor for the first time ever, and feel like 100 times better. Really hopeful that my neck and shoulder problems may be sorted out. Hurrah.
It is R's 40th birthday in a couple of weeks, and I have booked a hotel with Michelin starred restaurant. We are going to do a 2 day cycle tour and finish up there. I'm really looking forward to it.
Our garden is getting to look fantastic. We have worked really hard on it and spent loads of money, but it is going to be worth it. Lots of flowers but VEGETABLES!!! We have broad beans, peas, broccoli, cauliflowers, sprouts, purple sprouting, parsnips, early potatoes, sweet corn, artichokes, zucchini, butternut squash and pumpkins - and I am sure I must have missed something, but that will do!
I did a walk in the Black Mountains in aid of Mountain Rescue (R's Team) at the weekend - 43km, 12 hours exactly. I am fit and strong and so grateful for that.

Genuine question - please don't bite my head off, but is it really SO hard when other IF's do get pg? Really? It's been so hard for all of us, it still is, but surely another IF finally pg should lift us up - it must mean there's hope for us all?

If you are someone who has had a lot of miscarriages, and are now pregnant, or have had a baby, please let me know. I do want that hope. I won't be angry at you.

Apologies for very strange post. Am in a very strange mood.

Another wait then

2006-05-17T08:30:00.000+01:00

My temperature chart tells me I am definitely not pregnant, as did an early HPT on Sunday morning, so I shall just wait now for the blood to reconfirm. And, sad as I am, I looked up the due date for a baby conceived with LMP of 17th May. So if I conceive this month, and all the snake oil is good for what it is supposed to be good for, I shall deliver a baby on February 21st, 2007. Sure.
I think more than anything it's the waiting that gets me down.
Thanks for the comments on the last post. I am inclined to be much less reactionary on reflection. I wonder if people at work would judge me too old after all, if I finally do get pregnant. I wonder if it's really anybody else's business.

And then I read that Cancer, Baby had died at 33, and that's too young, and made me cry. Better be as kind as you can.

I read the news today . . .

2006-05-05T17:21:00.000+01:00

Oh boy – a woman of 62 is set to become the oldest woman in Britain to have a baby, after receiving IVF treatment in Italy. This woman is a doctor, no less. And to think I have qualms myself about having a baby at my age, a full 20 years her junior.

I do think that having a baby has to be undertaken with some consideration for the baby who will become an adult and have to deal with all the issues involved – he or she doesn’t get to choose the family they get. I know that there are so many unsuitable parents out there, but I still don’t see that as justification for creating more of them . . . or is it OK because she is clearly an intelligent woman an presumably wants a baby very much? All begs the question on why she is on the front page of the papers today.

Would be interested to know what you think . . . am I being reactionary?

Missed the boat (but got on the early train)

2006-05-04T18:17:00.000+01:00

I had a bad feeling yesterday morning – I took my BBT, and it was significantly higher than the day before, which had already been slightly higher that the day before that.
You don’t have to be a genius to work out that I had ovulated already.
And missed it.
The wanding confirmed my own prognosis, so no Ovitrelle injection – just the instruction to get straight home and get fertilising. Though the ‘window’ had probably passed anyway.

I just can’t believe I have been so STUPID! On normal cycles I am so switched on to all the signs, and often use OPKs too, and this time around I just bypassed all that stuff and thought my body would wait for the Ovitrelle – as if it would just know. Trust me to run a short(er) cycle just when I wasn’t supposed to.

And on top of all that I got dumped off a train because I had got on an earlier train than I had booked to come home. Perfect ending to a truly crap (and very expensive) day. And why the hell is it that if you miss your train and get on a later one, that is perfectly OK, but if you get finished a bit sooner than you thought it involves paying as much as your original ticket cost in supplement? God I hate them and their petty attitudes.

(Please do not answer the above question, as the man from First Great Western did answer me, but did NOT make me feel any better at all.)

Playing Tag

2006-05-02T13:45:00.000+01:00

I realised I actually quite enjoyed the Tag thing, and so hereby tag the following, with the project to give us 9 weird things (increased to 9 because I believe 9 is a lucky number, and definitely must be for Thalia) so the following people consider yourselves tagged:

Thalia
Lola Badeggs
Portliarge
Jill
Shanna

I shall be back to check! (Can you tell I used to be a teacher!?)

Tomorrow I am back to Harley Street to have a scan and probably the Ovitrelle injection if deemed ready. (Yes, this is costing me a fortune, but even more worrying I am running out of holiday!)

Then all we have to do is manage to fertilise the little thing(s).

Oh, and one day I will spend enough time on this blog to figure out how to put all the many many links on that I really feel I need to do. Am not a complete technophobe, just always pushed for time! And I live too far into the sticks even to be able to get broadband. Ho hum.

6 weird things to know about me then . . .

2006-04-27T14:06:00.000+01:00

I’ve been tagged apparently. Feels a bit odd, but at least this post can have a focus which is neither my reproductive system nor even my idiotic work situation. And it has given me something to think about for the last 24 hours or so – what is weird about me? R is very loyal, and told me there was NOTHING weird about me, but I have come up with one or two . . .

I have a female tabby cat called Roger. I pretty much knew, even when he was a kitten that he was a she, but I had it in my head that I wanted a big, confident tomcat, so we named him Roger. Perhaps even more weird is that Roger pees like a tom! We actually chose 2 (female) cats from the same litter – the other is called Delia and doesn’t have any gender confusion!

There is a 21 year age gap between my youngest sister and my oldest sister. I think that’s weird. There are 3 brothers in between, but I have always been slightly embarrassed that there is such an age difference. When I was a kid people used to ask if my parents were catholic when they found out I was one of 6, which with hindsight I think is a bit odd of them too.

I met my husband at an indoor climbing wall. I was 38, he was 35, and neither of us had been married before. Apparently this is weird. Even the vicar who married us, when she realised my age immediately assumed I was divorced. When she realised I wasn’t she said ‘ well, your mother must be delighted that you are finally getting married at your age’! I was all for ditching the vicar after that, but R is more tolerant, so we stuck with her.

I used to be completely driven in my life by the desire to travel. Right from when I was a child, I always wanted to travel, and not just holidays, but to live in different places too. This influenced the subjects I took at school (languages) and the whole life I have led and kind of business I now work in (travel). I have lived in Germany, Austria, Spain, France, USA and Canada, as well as all over the place in the UK. The WEIRD thing, for me at any rate, is that quite suddenly about 5 years ago I just stopped wanting to travel. Nowadays I am not even all that keen on going away from home on holiday, or even away for a night. I do it, of course, and mostly enjoy it, but that drive has completely vanished. I have no explanation for this, though I am now happier than I ever was.

I prefer cheese to chocolate. I realise I am in a minority with this one! I have been vegetarian for more than 15 years, but I could never give up cheese.

I do tend to get things in the wrong order – I was a ski rep before I could ski, I did a degree in German after I had just failed a German A level exam, I ran my own company in Spain before I ever had a ‘proper job’ in the UK. And, of course, I got pregnant before I got married, although as you know, I didn’t get the baby. That’s not meant to sound self-pitying, by the way, just a neat finish to this post.

Thanks again for all the comments - I know I am an irregular blogger, but I do enjoy the feedback and support!

In Praise of BBT

2006-04-19T08:46:00.000+01:00

Strange to be discovering something at this stage which is really so basic, but proving an enormous comfort. I hadn’t realised until I finally buckled and decided to ‘chart’, that the process does more than identify the point at which ovulation takes place. Towards the end of the cycle, if all is as it should be and you have actually managed to achieve pregnancy, your temperature remains high, while if not your temperature will drop back over the last 3 or so days. This has been such a new experience, as towards the end of this cycle (a) I have had a very clear idea of the exact day on which I ovulated, and (b) I could see that my temperature was NOT staying high, gradually, so that somehow it has not involved that horrible disappointment of the p-stick. So that when I was woken up at 3.30am this morning by the (certainly unwanted) feeling that ‘a new cycle had started’, I was expecting it completely and not ‘hanging on’ to that feeling that maybe . . . just maybe . . .

For a long time I have been using OPKs, but I am rarely 100% sure that one line is darker than or the same as the other - it just never seems quite unambiguous. So it has been case of a ‘I think I ovulated about then . . .’ and that has made the end of my cycle very difficult to predict, and I have used at least 2 HPTs most months (which gets expensive in addition to all the misery!) This time I didn't use any at all.

So - what happened in Harley Street? Here's the update. I have not been pregnant since last October, and although I realise this is not particularly unusual I am about to embark on something else new . . . I have just been prescribed a ‘super ovulation’ treatment - a bit of help with a push in the right direction. I now have 10 tablets of Clomid to stimulate some egg production, Ovitrelle to stimulate release, and then ‘timed intercourse’ to follow the Ovitrelle injection (– so no more giggling Mister!!) I admit I am slightly sceptical of all this ‘treatment’ which obviously comes at some cost again, seeing as I seem to ovulate perfectly all right without assistance. A little (greedy) bit of me thinks maybe the result of Clomid treatment will be to provide 2 eggs for a cycle and that I may have the miracle – twins. Of course the point seems to be to improve my chances. I am not getting any younger, and I don’t want to sound tragic, but I WILL stop this whole process at the end of the year if I continue unsuccessful. So I want to give myself the best shot I can.

Here’s hoping.

A long period of silence

2006-04-07T21:57:00.000+01:00

I will try and make up for a long period of silence.

One night last weekend, R and I lay in bed giggling about all the adjectives you can form from parts of the face. Cheeky, nosey, lippy, mouthy. You can’t have foreheady, or eyeish. ‘Eary’ works, though of course only phonetically, and not literally. I don’t know why we were finding such a daft conversation so funny, but we definitely did not end up in either the position nor frame of mind for making love. We chatted for a long while. We fell asleep hugging, and smiley. Like we should.

The night of the giggling was in spite of my LH surge. And I don’t care. (Except of course that we made up for lost time the following morning, and then for good measure the following evening too. I do care, of course and am worried now we might have missed the right moment).

But something in my nature makes me feel that I have to fight this whole ‘be good and do it by the book’ – I have a sort of back-to-front approach with a strong dash of superstition. Does it make any sense at all that, in the middle of a cycle during which I am desperate to get pregnant, I saw a little purse that would be so perfect for keeping tampons in, and felt completely compelled to buy it? It was truly as if the failure to buy it would have been the CAUSE of my next period. So I bought it. How could I do anything else? It was like taking back a bit of control.

I know I am probably sounding crazy, but I feel so angry. I am fed up with being out of control. It is depressing and frustrating. I caught up with www.thalia.typepad.com today, and I know exactly how she feels, on such a fine emotional knife-edge that she is moved to cry at a short film, regardless of the company.

Dammit, I can cry at those cancer adverts, I can cry when I break a glass. I can even induce real tears by imagining that my cat doesn’t really love me, but only sits on me because my lap is warm. I feel like crying some days when R leaves for work. But all these tears are just misplaced – all wrapped up in the frustration of not being able to take control. And a good old dollop of self-pity. (How do I know about the power of self-pity? I read it in Enid Blyton as a child, and recognised it as an indisputable truth, even then!) Self pity kicked in bigtime when I went to lunch with a colleague last Friday and caught her up on all the latest.

The latest is that I have been completely overlooked for a very minor line-manager role which has arisen as a result of another colleague’s maternity leave. (Naturally. There is always room for a little more irony in my life.) Not only was I overlooked, but I wasn’t even TOLD of the decision to give it to someone else, FB, who, as it happens, grumbles regularly about being overworked.

Incidentally, to do my current job I was taken out of another role where I had line management responsibility for 2 staff. I have also been with this company for 6 and a half years.

In contrast, FB joined the company a little over a year ago. She is also more than 10 years younger than me. This is not calculated to boost my self confidence.

When I confronted DM she said her credibility would have been compromised; "as we know", I went through a period when I was "struggling to cope". How could she have justified to the team an additional responsibility for me? I countered with the facts that since our ‘little talk’ I had made huge efforts to turn this all around, (which she acknowledges, and apparently I am again 'a pleasure to work with' ) and, after all, she knew what lay behind this temporary inability to cope. 5 miscarriages. 5 miscarriages. 5 FUCKING MISCARRIAGES. When you repeat those three little words, it definitely brings on a flood of self-pity.

But, apparently, if you need to maintain a commercial focus (which DM clearly does) they are not words that make much of an impression. Thanks for the flowers. No thanks for much else. Thanks also, I suppose to my self control – I hated myself for breaking and for walking out of the office, but really better that than to fight anymore. This is a woman who not only cannot cut me any slack in spite of all the years of damn good work I have put in and the efforts I have made and all in the full knowledge of what I have been through – but who was actually my 'friend' for years before she became my manager. It is ridiculous, but I can hardly bare to admit - this woman was a second bridesmaid at my wedding in 04. What???

Shovel on the self pity. What kind of friends do I have?**

Hmmm – interesting really that I find myself writing about this, which happened nearly 3 weeks ago now, but is still making me SO ANGRY.

And so here I am writing about work again. I honestly don’t know to what extent work really is unbearable, and to what extent I use it to refocus all this suppressed rage about the lost babies. My 5 lost babies. And in my radar are 3 new babies born since I last blogged: Sophie, Niall and Isla. I am not angry, not even exactly jealous, (I feel more jealous of women who are actually pregnant - is that odd?). I just want to be included too. How sad that I can’t just be happy like everyone else about a new baby.

I still read a few blogs, especially the ones of people who visit me here, but I bore myself when I rant like this, and I don't see that it achieves anything. My fragility makes it very hard to read the sad stuff, and I wish I could write something more positive.

I see Dr X on Monday, as I will be 7 days into my latest course of Prednisolone, and he wants to check me over. I don't know what it involves. 7 days after that . . .well let's hope for something more positive.

**Actually I wish to state here that I do have some very good and loyal friends indeed, and I would never put any of them in a category with DM. It hurts me that I have to admit that I have to have a category for not-good friends.

Clotbusting? (Cloudbursting)

2006-03-15T08:39:00.000Z

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200603/s1592571.htm

Sounds like the old Kate Bush song, but this link came to me this morning, and it makes sense to me.

Having trouble coming up with blog entries as I seem to be all over the place with my cycle, spotting after just 26 days, had to cancel my follow-up appointment with Dr X, and feeling useless. A bagful of syringes (yes - clotbuster - to start using once I get a positive test) have been banished to the spare room this morning.

I asked about the spotting - can sometimes be caused by the Prednisolone but shouldn't affect my ovulation, and therefore shouldn't affect my fertility.

I don't know who or what or if I believe anything anymore.

Hooray, hooray! Hurrah, hurrah!

2006-02-20T22:11:00.000Z

Blood test results today – FSH/LH at 7.2 and 5.9 respectively.
Even if FSH as little as twice the LH is diagnostic, this is now effectively ruled out.

So now to Thalia’s question.
Why am I so sure that my problem is NK cells?
I guess if I am really really honest, there is some superstition involved, but then, having had no believeable diagnosis (other than my age, and I don't believe that) so you are actually left either having no reason for why these miscarriages continue to happen or you believe something.

For background, and colouring my judgement you may think, is that I simply do not believe that I am too old to have children, or that fundamentally the eggs I am producing are not good enough. For my age I have already managed to get pregnant far more frequently than would be predicted statistically. At the IVF clinic I was told that each cycle I only have a one in twenty chance of even becoming pregnant at my age. I have been pregnant 5 times since November 2003. My own mother had 6 children, and she was 44 when my younger sister was born. My mother, now 85 is still fit and healthy. All the tests I have had would back up my feeling that I am not 'hormonally old'. My progesterone levels are good, my FSH and LH levels (now retested) are very positive, and not showing signs of my age. I realise I haven't got years and years to hang about, and all this delay is worrying the hell out of me, but I am not too old at the moment.

On the day I was originally discharged from my local hospital by Dr Nice, the consultant, I happened to be listening to Radio 4 and there was a brief news item about new work on recurrent miscarriage. It was the first time I had heard about NK cells, but started looking into it. It was a lightbulb moment.

When I started to realise that the immune system was suspected of rejecting the embryo as a 'foreign' body, - it just made sense to me. I know I have an strong, (even over-active immune system) - I work in an air-conditioned office with up to 15 other people who all get colds which go around and in over 3 years I have NEVER been ill. I don't know if it is because I keep so fit, I know if you get over-fit it can actually have the opposite effect, but even R is very rarely sick though he did have a slight cold a few weeks ago.

Anyway, the fact remains, something in my blood certainly fights off infections. This seemed to me an indication that NK cells could be the issue, and I wanted to get tested. When I got the test done (which I believe is not available on the NHS, so had to be done privately, but anyway I had just been discharged from the NHS hospital and referred to Dr ScaryHair) it was the FIRST TIME I had had any test back which was not described as completely normal. It seemed it was the first time she had seen a result out of the 'normal' range. It seemed to unsettle her.

And now?

Now I am not sure of anything.

I do not believe I have an 85% chance of having a baby under this new treatment. I don't know if that is because I reason that a doctor who charges for his private patients would say that, or whether it is simply to protect myself from a dangerous hope. I think I do believe that in tests prednisolone and / or treatment with blood thinning medication does or has helped many women to overcome the problem of recurrent miscarriage.

Maybe it has nothing to do with NK cells, but that is basically irrelevant. One woman had NINETEEN MISCARRIAGES before undergoing prednisolone treatment. Women on recent trials have had an AVERAGE of 6. This is not just snake oil.

I am not advocating this for use alongside IVF or anything, but really, what have I got to lose? I have lost 5 pregnancies. 5 babies I thought I would have, and I didn't. And it may be that prednisolone will suppress my Natural Killer cells in my over-active immune system and my sixth baby will live. Or maybe not. I am slightly offended that I am described as a vulnerable (and by implication, a bit weak and a little stupid) by some. I think that although I hope that this treatment will work (of course) I am prepared for failure. Sometimes I get a glimpse of that. The realisation that it's not just no baby again this time, it could be no baby, no child, not ever. Of course I am not prepared for that.

One thing Dr X did say, which was so blindingly obvious that I wish he would write it in letters across the sky. The statistics of recurrent miscarriage don't add up. One miscarriage is incredibly common, but two in a row is already unusual enough to point to a problem, so it is already more likely you will have the third. Intervention is required, or the RPL will continue. Time and again I have been told my chances of everything being all right next time is just as good as anyone else. I have known this was not right, that it didn't make sense. Don't believe them when they tell you just to keep on trying. I have to do something and this is what I am doing.

Unless you have any better ideas?

Do we believe in miracles?

2006-02-17T08:32:00.000Z

Dr X obviously believes in miracles. He seems to have seen a few. He stops miscarriages. They are even making a TV programme about him.
He was kind and listened to the story.
(A big fat clown, he must be 20 stone. Can you take medical advice from a 20 stone man?)
I was calm and didn’t cry.
I gave him my excel chart which shows every miscarriage and the length of every cycle. I like to think of it as useful information.
I gave him the letters from my consultant with test results from all the tests.
I gave him the letter from the last fertility expert, who tried but couldn’t save my 5th pregnancy.
He looked at these, though not all that carefully.
He said my NK result was meaningless, as it had not been carried out by a lab which gave meaningful results.
He said all they got right was the price. £350.
He told me he could offer me treatment – steroids and a blood thinner.
Because of my age and the number of miscarriages, he will not insist that I go through another NK cell test – he doesn’t need it if I don’t feel the need.
I told him, honestly, that I do believe that NK cells are my problem. And even if not, I do believe that blood thinners are effective, for whatever reason.
(see Babyfruit for evidence, if nothing else).
So I agreed to go ahead, and he agreed to treat me.

The cynics will say, desperate woman, money-grabbing doctor. Match made in heaven. The fool is easily parted from her money.

Dr X said I had an 85% chance of a successful pregnancy.
Who knows.

But then, for some reason that I can’t remember, and just before our half hour was up, he suddenly decided I might have PCOS, and insisted I needed a blood retest.
What? PCOS? I don’t have a weight problem (well, nothing significant); I don’t have acne or thinning hair, nor facial hair nor dark patches on my skin.
(See – I have checked PCOS out already). I do have quite long and slightly irregular cycles – they can vary by up to 7 days. But he looked at my FSH/LH test at 4.2/8.2 and said it was diagnostic. Why had this not been picked up? We went back to the letter from my consultant that said we could pretty much rule out PCOS. But Dr X is not convinced.
I can’t believe I so nearly walked out of there with real hope – I felt so cheated by a last minute problem. I only had about 2 minutes during which I BELIEVED I might be able to have a baby, and it was so lovely.
I SO WANT NOT to have PCOS. I have tried 2 tests on the web, and scored very low – really unlikely, but that doesn’t count anyway if the blood test is diagnostic, I suppose. Of course, Dr X has the solution even if the test show PCOS. Metformin, or something – insulin sensitising drug. Has the rather tempting side effect of making you lose weight. But Dr Nice, back at the NHS says it works for some, not for everyone. He was surprised about Dr X’s suspicion of PCOS. Then we looked at my last blood test, which was taken, it transpired, on day 10 of my cycle. Not ideal, apparently. So he scheduled me for a re-test.
Today I get my blood retested. Day three of my cycle. My bleed is heavy and crampy and I am cranky and edgy.
If they tell me it is PCOS, I think I will go and find a stone to hide under.
You have to laugh, really.
Please can I have my miracle, I promise to be good.

Thoughtless and self-centred me!

2006-02-03T18:02:00.000Z

I have been very remiss, because I have not mentioned how incredibly kind and uplifting your comments have been, and while I have been really pretty low I have SO appreciated the solidarity from 'out there'.

I have been 'surfing' the blogs a little less, which is REALLY NOT because I am not interested - on the contrary, I get really drawn in and involved, and I get really upset and angry for you all when the news is frustrating or disappointing, which it seems to be quite a lot.

And this is really a very short post, just to say that I am visiting Dr Expert on Monday, (I think I will call him Dr X for short) and all my hopes are pinned on him! Well - let me put it this way - if he can't 'fix' me, I think I will probably have to do the puppy thing after all.

But I haven't given up yet. And neither has R, though how he stays so patient, positive and supportive I shall never know.

So the chicken-keeper leaves Herefordshire (with R on hand-holding duty) for the bright lights of London on Monday (Harley Street, no less) so wish me luck!

Shall let you know how it goes. I hope it is going well for you, I really do. Enjoy the weekend.

In battle with my body - the route to self destruction

2006-02-02T17:29:00.000Z

One of the effects of this syndrome, (and I’m sure it’s not just me), that there is no-one to blame but your own body. I am effectively in battle with my own body – the resentment, the frustration that something goes wrong every time I get pregnant and in spite of the fact that it is MY BODY, I have NO CONTROL.

This is why I spend so long examining every thing that goes into my body – no additives, but lots of supplements. Aspirin, folic acid, royal jelly, omega oils. Plenty of snake oil.

‘I will control what my body does, I will control what goes in it, and control how it behaves’.

But it doesn’t work. Nothing works.

And nobody is to blame. But this does not compute. I am modern women, programmed to take control of my life. I ‘snap out’ of depression, Ihave a life that is what I make of it. I am not a passive victim. I am strong, I am powerful, I am in control of my life. (Hear me roar?)

So what happens? In battle with my own body I lose confidence. I cannot win this battle and I cannot bear the miserable consequences of NOT winning. Another lost pregnancy. Another nearly-baby we thought of names for, pinned our dreams on, but finished up flushing down the loo. An pitiful, pathetic, enraging end.

Just more anger and frustration directed where? At myself for being incapable of doing what millions of women do, apparently effortlessly. But not me. Not in my body. (Hear me cry).

Rambling my way through a post.

2006-01-19T18:54:00.000Z

I went skiing last week, hence no posts for a while. With a bit more time to think, I tried to sort out my head, because the miscarriage thing and the longing for my baby has become so dominant in my head that I can't remember what is really important sometimes.
I don't mean that the baby isn't important, but IT ISN'T THERE and I don't want to be living in a world where I just think of what I haven't got. I never could stand that in other people, and I certainly don't want to be there myself.
It has been very distracting though, and I had a long and horrible meeting with my manager on Tuesday to be told that I was not really working very well. Other people had mentioned things. All a bit vague, and nobody wants to say anything because no-one wants to see me upset (oh please) but of course the most upsetting thing was that either she had solicited these comments, or my colleagues had gone to her of their own accord to make them. Neither is very uplifting to the spirits. I was floored, really. Flawed I guess, (ha ha).
Did I understand their concerns? Did I think it fair? No, I bloody well didn't. I was furious and devastated. Both at the same time. So what did I do, do you think? Nothing I can be proud of, I started to try and explain and ended up crying so hard she had to go and find me tissues. How pathetic. Oh god, how I hate it when I am so weepy, and I had been for the whole week away skiing too, so I tried to explain, and it always comes out as pathetic and pointless when you are in such a mess. And of course she was embarrassed and suggested I went away 'to think' and that we meet again soon.
I managed to joke, why couldn't people just come and talk to me if there were a problem, why should they think it would upset me. I am not sure she thought I was very funny though, I'd embarrassed her by being upset. What did she expect?

But that wasn't really the point of this post. I want to say that I need to get my own life back and I spent time (while I sat in a mountain restaurant because my ski-boots were hurting so much I just couldn't ski anymore - I have never found boots to fit me properly) thinking and just trying to answer the question:

Baby aside, what do I really want?

How hard should that be to answer?
I must have been very distracted these past 2 years.

Starting with the real basics, I want to be with my husband, I love him completely. He is absolutely the best man I have ever met. And I love where we live.

So we get to job.
I do like my job, but I think I might just need some real time out. I can't deny the thought of maternity leave is SO attractive. Just to break the routine. Do something different and fulfilling. I have been in this company for just over 6 years, which is by far and away a record for me. The job is great and worthwhile, the company incredibly friendly and easy. Pay's not best and there are always things that you could improve, but I really can't complain, especially when I talk to friends who work for idiot bosses or huge, stupid organisations who have lost touch with common sense.
So do I want to leave or work part time? Would I miss the social aspects of coming to work? Do I need the routine? How would we manage with less money? Or could I find alternatives that would make me happier? How bad does it all have to get before I move on? Or is it really not that bad at all, but the shadow my 'personal life' is casting across my working life is making my working life much harder too.

I DO seem distracted.
Actually I think I am depressed.
It wouldn't be such a huge surprise after all.

I have lost my focus, it's true, and I am really struggling to find a way back to me.

Not Pregnant. Of course.

2006-01-05T18:44:00.000Z

Lots to catch up with, and yet somehow nothing to say either. I have been posting a bit on other people's blogs, but can't think what to say here.

I have just the ‘one pink line’ on a HPT this morning, and am not even really trying not to be miserable about it. We did everything right, but I didn’t conceive, and that’s the way it goes. Last year I went about 6 cycles without conceiving, which probably sounds like not too bad really, except if you start adding up all the time that is passing. 6 months, then a miscarriage, let all that clear and start over. Why do I carry on with it? My last miscarriage was October and I am only now on my first really ‘normal’ cycle. The medics are generally pessimistic - Dr Scary Hair went to great lengths to put me off the whole idea that I might actually one day succeed in this unnatural pursuit of a baby. At best she gives me a 20% chance of conceiving then a 40% chance of keeping it. Thanks. Nice to have your spirits buoyed up that way.

Even my consultant has mentioned the option of a puppy. And my GP that I should think about adoption. (Not an option, really, UK adoption seems to be a complete headfk. And at my age I think they would just laugh. )

But I don't feel too old for children. This age thing is so random - I know people 10 years younger than me who are much older in so many ways - including physically. Why does my age seem to matter all of a sudden?

Bizarrely a little bit of me is hanging on to the ‘HPT might still be wrong’ theory. (It was one of the early ones, because my cycle is long). I don’t really know why – I don’t even FEEL pregnant, except for craving protein, and being generally very hungry, but that is bound to be the steroids. Just a bit more of a mess-up for my system. Move on to next month. . . how tiring. But I have always been impatient.

You know what – I just feel really sad and defeated, and I don’t think I am up to writing much more here tonight.

Bit of an emergency post!

2005-12-09T09:38:00.000Z

Bit of an emergency – my laptop is currently sick with a virus, and I have passed it to our IT department here at work to try and cure for me. In the meantime I am putting this post in from my work PC just to keep slightly up to date!
My new cycle has finally started – with a bloody vengeance, if you get my drift!
I have started taking my prednisolone steroid tablets, which seems really strange, though I suppose you would count a pregnancy from this point if it DID happen, so it makes it a bit more sensible when looked at like that.
All I have to do is get pregnant now (R on standby! Ov sticks in hand!)
Oh – and the Christmas party has been duly survived and since we last spoke I have been running 3 times and mountain biking once, and feel much better all through.
And finally I cannot end this post (short as it was supposed to have been) without a nod to John Lennon. I was a seventeen-year-old angst-ridden teenager with a John Lennon obsession when he got shot. When I got married, last year, we chose his birthday to do it on. Hearing so much of his music on the radio these last few days has brought back a lot of the emotions, or memories of those emotions that I used to feel about him. Fantastic lyrics (and I am not just talking about Imagine). A treat for another day perhaps.

Crying in my lunch break.

2005-12-01T19:56:00.000Z

I mentioned R and I recently went to the States on holiday – R has relatives in Albuquerque and we stayed there with various excursions around the general area, including hiking into the Grand Canyon. I think I got pregnant at the bottom of the GC – how cool is that!

On our return journey we had about 5 hours to wait in Denver. I bought More magazine, (with a picture of Jodie Foster on the front). I don’t think I really twigged that it was aimed at the over-40’s (I don’t think there is anything really like that over here), but it seemed to have some interesting articles. Something for the plane.

I read an article which gave a brief synopsis of Aliza’s babyfruit blog, and was immediately interested in someone writing about their miscarriage experiences online. Wow. This was new to me.

I got back to the UK, and discovered very soon after that I was pregnant, and logging on to Aliza, found she was too. Bizarrely, we were both at 5 weeks of our 5th pregnancies, both with 4 miscarriages behind us. It did seem like a bit of a sign, if you believe in that sort of thing. I was hooked in already.

As I explained in my last post, I wasn’t confident about my pregnancy, but underwent a whole raft of ‘treatment’ that I had not experienced before. Progesterone pessaries, steroid tablets, weekly HCG and progesterone level testing and scans. Aliza was going through similar, though for steroid read Lovenox. She was also not optimistic.

Why all this? I have been keeping up with Aliza of course, I think she is fab, and am so happy to have found her, and the whole online infertiles thing. You probably know already, she is just at the end of her first trimester. I am really happy for her. But it is definitely completely possible to be completely happy for someone else, and simultaneously pathetically sorry for oneself. Maybe today I was really tired and therefore more prone to tearfulness (does this happen to anyone else?) It just hit me so hard and out of the blue. I went to lunch, and cried and cried all over again for my lost first trimester, my lost baby. Fuck it all. My FIFTH lost baby.

My parents are coming to stay with us for Christmas. They are both 84 (yes, mum was 42 when she had me). I had, of course, in the short time that I stayed pregnant realised that I would be just into my 2nd trimester for Christmas and could tell them while they were here. And R’s parents too. I was going to make everyone’s Christmas happy. (Oh god, I’m crying again, when does it stop?) R’s mum is so dying for us to have kids we had to tell her about all this crap in the end to stop her keep dropping brick-sized hints, and telling us about how every woman in the area seems to be dropping another sprog (and when would we ever get around to it).

I just don’t feel strong at all. I cope, but what is that? I never did know.

It should be me telling my friends, telling my family. But it’s not. Again.

I am just sitting waiting for my next cycle so that I can start my steroid treatment. Might not work even.

Oh – and it’s the company Christmas party tomorrow night. Can’t bloody wait.

The 5 Miscarriages history and medical background . . .

2005-11-28T22:02:00.000Z

Feeling like a bit of a fraud, as have now had a couple of questions about why I haven't seen specialists. Well, I have and below is the update on what has been a bit of a journey to '5 miscarriages later'. I have seen doctors, as you will see - 1st NHS GP, then referred on to NHS specialist and then finally to the Great Private Doctor Who Knows More and . . . whatever . . .

Not so great, actually, but here goes (it's a bit long . . .)

1st miscarriage – November 2003 (Thanksgiving, USA)
2nd miscarriage – April 2004 (Austria, on holiday)
3rd miscarriage – September 2004 (Wales, hen weekend) (mine actually)

It took until the third before my GP (NHS) would refer me for any tests, so we had our first meeting with a consultant in November 2004. (If you are wondering why it wasn’t until November you are probably American! An appointment following a referral within a couple of months is completely normal – actually not too bad at all on the National Health Service. Bear in mind, at least, there is no charge for this).

Tests, tests – lots of blood tests to make sure we are chromosomally compatible, karyotyping, immunoglobins. The post-3rd -miscarriage scan pretty much ruled out PCOS. They tested my ‘day 21’ progesterone (29), FSH and LH levels.

All of it was fine. No sign of any problem. Hormone levels all just as they should be. No blood problems. Nothing wrong with us.

Always the reprise is ‘it will probably be fine next time’.

It all took 8 months of tests, from November 2003 to June 2004 to get the ‘all clear’ from the NHS hospital and a referral to a private clinic if we wanted it – an IVF clinic, which we were warned may not want to deal with us if we presented a poor chance of success. I was a bit confused by the referral to IVF, as I didn’t have a problem getting pregnant, but Dr Nice Man said they also had a Recurrent Miscarriage Screening programme and could run tests not available on the NHS. An initial investigation and consultation was about £400 as I remember, and of course we went for it. Try everything. Leave no stone unturned. . .

Anyway, as I say, I had been discharged by the consultant on 20th June 2004. I had had a morning appointment, and as I drove the half hour back to work, by pure chance I heard a brief news item reporting that women with recurrent miscarriage may be suffering from raised Natural Killer cell levels – white blood cells will live in the womb and attack the foetus as an intruder – just in the way that people who have organs transplanted can reject the transplanted organs.

It was a flash of light moment, though at the time I didn’t even realise I was pregnant at that very moment (ta-da!)

I had had a brief bleed which had started on 19th June, just at the time I expected my period, although I realised I hadn’t bled very much. It was another 10 days later that I had the tiniest bit of spotting and I suddenly thought that maybe I hadn’t really had a proper period after all – either that or I was having some kind of ovulation spotting. Anyway, I went out at lunchtime from work and bought both a pregnancy test kit and an ovulation test kit. Well – I am sure you are ahead of me and have guessed already – positive pg test, and already nearly 6 weeks without the heartache.

This was the big one. It felt like a sign, a ‘this was meant to be’ – just as we had been discharged with nothing wrong, it turns out we are pregnant and nothing wrong! It was nearly my birthday, and R had booked a fantastic gourmet weekend in Cornwall, visiting the Eden project and so on. We spent our time there getting tentatively excited. Guessing at names – just out of the blue while driving along, I would say ‘how about Miriam . . . or Robert for boy?’ and R would say ‘hmmm – not sure about Robert’ and then, 20 minutes later ‘No skiing for us then, this winter . . .’ or some such thought. All I am trying to say is we were both 100% there. We were really, really, really pregnant. My birthday was the day London won the Olympic bid. The next day was the dreadful London bombings. And that weekend, while R was away, late on Saturday night I started to bleed heavily. I thought I would break into bits. I didn’t know how to bear it.

4th miscarriage: July 2005
I bled for about 2 weeks. I went back to the hospital I had recently been discharged from, but my Dr Nice wasn’t available. They felt sorry for me though, and booked me an appointment to see him again (in another couple of months of course) which is how I came to be ‘under’ 2 doctors – both the NHS chap and the private Dr Scary Hair.

Once again, we had to wait even for the private appointment which came through for the last Tuesday in August. Between my referral and the appointment, of course, I had had the 4th loss.

Having waited 8 weeks for this appointment, gone through another miscarriage, I was not impressed that Dr Scary Hair was NOT available to see us. We saw a fertility nurse, who was not impressive. She explained that my date of birth was in the wrong year. That IVF is not an ideal programme for women with recurrent miscarriages. That Madonna gives older women the wrong impression about the ease of bearing children. She only got away with all this because I was SO MISERABLE. Too miserable to fight. But we did establish that there was a test they could run to see if I had elevated NK cell levels.

I shall cut short at this stage, as I am going ON AND ON, so the rest of the story is in bullets:
They took my blood sample and £350 for the test (to send it to USA apparently). Was told the result would take 6 weeks.
I went on holiday to USA, with instructions to call on my return for the result.
I called – still no doctor scary – please call back.
Called back – YES ELEVATED NK CELLS (Scary hair's surprised, I’m not a bit)
2 days later – positive pregnancy test (silly me, bad timing again)
Manic attempts to give me everything that may have mitigated against another loss.
Failed.
Fifth miscarriage. October 2005.
Scary Hair contacts me to say doesn’t really want to treat me anymore (I think I am going to be a bad statistic)
Meeting with Dr Nice. Reluctantly prescribes steroid as I wanted. I feel I may have a chance for the next time.
You are up to date, and sorry for the rambling!

I'm hopeless - will drop in a link another day, but for REALLY INTERESTING information on this stuff, do a search on the BBC website, news section, and search 'recurrent miscarriage'.