Challenges... hmmmm....Did I mention the IVF??

Well, some of you (hopefully) reading this know about our latest challenge, some of you don't... I thought I'd share it with you.

Alex and I have started on an IVF cycle, and are a few days away from the "down reg" test. Then the injections start... For those of you not familiar with IVF (who care!), you first sniff drugs that bring on a premature menopause and practically zero your hormones (and yes, you can imagine how great that feels - poor Alex... every bit as dramatic as it sounds!) There's a reason that your body doesn't go from 100% normal levels of hormones to nothing in less than three weeks - it's called sanity.

Then, and if your hormones are flattened appropriately (medically term I believe), you get to inject yourself every day for about 2 weeks to fill your system back up with some nice synthetic hormones which makes your ovaries swell up like a couple of pomegranates - then they suck out the eggs that have matured (don't even ask) introduce them to your husband's "donation" (over dinner, with a nice bottle of wine and some soft music I think?), pop them in a dish for a bit of dirty dancing, and a miracle happens! Well, that's the plan... the next hurdle is to take these tiny blobs of cells with aspirations to be babies and pop them back into me to hope and pray they transform into tiny baby Briggses... It all sounds like something from a sic-fi film, but then natural conception is just as miraculous when you analyse it (which I try not to do very often).

So, the cold facts of baby-making.

Yes, every spiritual fibre (can you have "spiritual fibres??") in me screams that it's unnatural and not how you'd choose it. Of course it's not!! But we have to face facts. In medical terms, in relation to fertility, I'm up there with the dinosaurs. I'm about the oldest, most shrivelled thing to walk the planet! I imagine my ovaries like a couple of wizened old walnuts (nice!). Stop it, my acupuncturist tells me. Imagine that inside you're 20 years old, and everything is at it's prime (you wish, Alex! That's the closest you're going to get to a 20 year old!! I hope...).

Oh yeah, I didn't mention the acupuncture. She's fab, but God it hurts! Good practice for the injections, I guess. She's trying to get my energies all flowing in the right direction. I'm amazed she found any, but she tells me they're there, buried under all the stress! She's reassuring but practical, compassionate but realistic, and I like her. except when she's putting the needles in. Then she's a witch.

My husband is doing his best. His wife has turned into this slightly unpredictable, hugely emotional, weepy irrational knot of longing. Of course, the first 3.5 years of marriage have well prepared him for this. Let's face it, I am usually a "slightly unpredictable, hugely emotional, weepy, irrational knot of something" - just right now it happens to be down to the IVF.

So, we soldier on. I swing from happy to manically depressed and back to hopeful again, and Alex sits on the sidelines trying to say the right thing and asking me "how long till the injections start?" in an apprehensively-supportive- voice... It's a helpless feeling, knowing this huge important thing cannot be influenced by us. We're both control freaks - we have no control right now, and it's really hard.

I just FEEL this baby, you know? Sometimes, lying in the dark, I think I feel a baby move - silly I know. I wake up some mornings and wonder where my baby is - and then remember she isn't even here (yet?). I almost feel her, almost smell her, ALMOST touch her... But you can't be almost pregnant, can you? Then I tell myself "in three weeks time you might be pregnant" - so maybe I "almost" am...

There's nothing missing from my life in terms of what I already have. I am more deeply and intensely in love than I could ever have imagined possible. I have a wonderful son and step children, and a home I love, and job... I am so lucky. It is not that I am trying to complete my life, or fill a gap exactly. It's just that I want Alex's baby so much, and I feel this child so close to me but just out of reach, and I can't give up on her.

So, there's the challenge of the day for January 26th.

It's right up there with

1. Can I resist the bar of chocolate on my desk? (that will be a no, then)

and

2. Alex is cooking dinner tonight - my challenge there being NOT to say "I usually don't cook it that way, honey"... "have you thought about adding any water"... or "if you do it that way, the oven might explode"...

Hope your day is working out well - what challenges have you got...???