Grumpy Cow

I remember now why I called this blog "The Challenge of Life"!

Take a mother with a hip replacement, a father who is misbehaving even more than usual in terms of his temper, add a husband who has decided it is time to give my father some home truths about his behaviour (and is perfectly justified might I add), and then, just for good measure, add a bit more bleeding this morning out of the blue - and "just relax" doesn't really seem to fit!

Two of my closest friends are charging (separately) around Australia with their families, so I can't pick up the phone and have a whinge to either of them like I normally would! (Perhaps the fact they've both gone to Australia should tell me something... hmmm....) Life feels a bit of an uphill struggle just now. I know that most of the world are having a worse time. I know I should be counting blessings, and I am, honestly.

I feel in my heart that all is well with the baby, and I am not allowing myself a single negative thought (well, officially!!). We have the 8 week scan on Thursday, so two days to wait and then we'll hopefully get confirmation that all is OK. Another hurdle. I cannot wait for the 12 week moment, when I can really enjoy all this, and R.E.L.A.X.!!

I am trying to be calmer and less "hyper". For mine, and the baby's sake and most definitely for my long-suffering Husband's sake. I know he's sitting at work today feeling unfairly treated. Last night I was mad-hormonal-grumpy-cow-from-hell and I don't really know why. I ranted and raved and I was horrible. FOUL! I hope he reads this today, and knows my heart is heavy, and that I am sorry. I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

If you get a moment, read my husband's last blog post. He's an amazing man. He is the most complicated, difficult, intense and impossible human being I have ever met. He is also the most loving, bravest, loyal, gentle, thoughtful, reflective, intelligent, knowledgeable human being I have ever met. It makes for an amazing life with him. Add in my own intense, often ridiculous and not-always-very-grown-up way of handling things, and it can go spectacularly right and sometimes the absolute opposite...

I wish I could change my often-angry response to things. It ALWAYS leads to me feeling bad. It often leads to my lovely husband feeling bad.

I read this today;

"Real Happiness
Are you beyond happiness and sorrow? Is your life, your day, a series of peaks and troughs - one minute ecstatic, next minute depressed. If you are up and down, even a little, it probably feels normal, because the swings between such extremes have been with you for so long. But you don't need the ups and downs to make life feel alive. In fact the ups we call happiness are not really happiness but a kind of false interpretation of happiness. Real happiness is not the result of rising out of depression, and it does not result into falling into regular periods of depression. Real happiness is stable, constant, lasting, not dependent on anyone or anything. Sometimes we call it contentment or serenity or joy. But it's not excitement. Excitement will result in depression. Happiness just is. It's hard to imagine it after a life of highs and lows. Faced with the choice of constant, stable contentment and all the ups and downs, some people choose to stay with the ups and downs. And this is called addiction. The ups are dependent on something and that something just does not last forever. To discover real happiness don't pursue it and don't make it dependent on anything"

seems a pretty good note to end on today...

I put this picture up (my favourite of our wedding day), to remind myself I am not always a grumpy wife

Rollercoaster Week

Thank you to everyone who has shown so much interest in my Mum's recovery. It has been very touching and I have been moved by your comments very much.

After a pretty horrendous experience during the operation (imagine someone with a hammer and chisel taking off your hip bone whilst you're conscious - I am not joking), and the first night in intense pain, she is well on the road to recovery.

It has been an exhausting roller-coaster, but thank God we are now on the gentler slope!

We're all going to the hospital again tonight to see her, and she sounded bright and "normal" this morning.

So, hopefully, things will continue to improve!

I am having a tiny bit of bleeding at the moment, so I'm obviously concerned about the baby, but trusting all is well and keeping focussed on our healthy little star growing the way it should be inside me.

What a week...!

My Mum

My mum is having a hip replacement today - right now, actually.

My heart is all knotted up with the worry of it. In September last year, she was on a cruise with my father in Egypt. Her hip was a little sore, there seemed something not quite right. In the space of six months, she has virtually lost it's use altogether.

She moves by hanging on to furniture.

She looks so old, and it hurts to watch her flinching and catching her breath when a step hurts even more than usual. My Mum never complains. When you ask, she says "I'm fine". She's far from "fine".

She cried when it snowed a few weeks back, and she couldn't come sledging on the slopes with my son and I. My heart ached so much that day.



So today, they will give her an epidural, she will listen to headphone music to drown out the sound of the saw (I kid you not), and they will take out this ragged, worn thing that she used to fling me up onto when I was a baby and carry me round on, and give her a shiny new one.

The next few weeks will be painful, and her progress will probably be slow.

I try to look on the good side of it all. The pain will initially be intense, but within a few weeks, she'll be making great progress, we hope. The Spring is almost here. She'll be able to enjoy the summer. As I get fatter and slower with my pregnancy, she'll get faster and fitter!! I like that thought!

I just want to pick her up on a Saturday morning, and walk the dogs with her on a sunny day. I just want to take her for coffee, and not worry how close I can park to the cafe. I just want to go shopping with her at the weekend, and not care what time we get home.

I just want my Mum back.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star...

Yesterday was nerve-wracking!

It was the date of our 6 week scan, to find out if the embryo transfer really has resulted in a viable baby or two!

This was the point where we found out how many babies we might be having, and, critically, whether such a thing as a hearbeat might be detected...

I was incredibly nervous. Alex was too. My emotions ranged from "please can they find a heartbeat and a baby" to "what if it is twins??"...

Well, our luck continues.

One of our stars is still with us....

They found one embryo, doing exactly what it should do at this stage, and growing just right. More importantly than anything, fluttering in the corner of the little white speck that is our future child, was a tiny movement, like a miniature butterfly trapped in a cobweb.

A heartbeat.


My whole life has been about protecting myself. I have played the "what if...?" game since I was a little girl. Always trying to make sure I didn't get caught out by something bad happening that I didn't plan for or anticipate. The problem with that oh-so-careful approach is that most of the things you're scared of never happen, and I know the energy I've put into worrying about them is wasted energy.

So, I have decided to really try and stop worrying about what might be, to not see this as a series of hurdles to be jumped, but to relax and finally enjoy where we are right now. I am pregnant, we are having a baby, and it is healthy and has a beating heart! And did I mention how wonderful my husband is being right now? How I feel cocooned in his love? It's a pretty wonderful place to be.

I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

My husband has a look on his face I only dreamt about seeing one day.

For an old 39 year old (!), I feel like running a marathon or climbing a mountain!! Then again, when I look back over the last 6 weeks, maybe we just did...

....and now for something completely different!

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.- Lao Tzu


I have been lost in a daze of "pregnant" for the past week, but stumbled acorss this amazing photo today, which I couldn't resist.

This crystal cave has just been found in the Naica Mine, Chihuahua Mexico.

These are Selenite crystals (gypsum) and are the largest crystals ever discovered. They are 1000 feet down in a limestone host rock where they are mining for lead, zinc and silver.

These crystals were formed by hydrothermal fluids emanating from the magma chambers below. The miners had to drill through the Naica fault, which they were
worried would flood the mine, and this is what they discovered!!

Isn't it amazing?!

Mother nature at her most incredible!

OK, OK, I guess 4 IS enough... I'll stop now...

86,400 Seconds

Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with £86,400.

Every evening whatever part of the balance you fail to use during the day is deleted.

What would you do?

Draw out every penny and use it well, of course!!!

Each of us has such a bank - Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Invest the day's deposits well! How could you bring the most contentment, happiness and benefit to yourself and others?

The clock is running...

Super Star!

I cannot quite take it in!

This has been the hardest wait of my life, and the most emotional. This morning, the whole IVF process culminated in one small word.

Pregnant.

sorry, I mean one big word! PREGNANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will remember this morning for ever. The best moment? Well, there were two. My husband telling me whilst making me a tea and waiting for the test results how VERY VERY much he wanted this to work. The second was his grin (he has a wonderful crooked smile that I fell in love with in a photo I saw of him before we ever met each other). His grin was because we THOUGHT we could see a faint line on the test appearing. Of course, I'd bought another test, (one would never be enough), and although the hospital one showed the faintest of lines, the other was a digital one like the picture above.

PREGNANT.

I feel so numb that I want to cry, and laugh and shout and run around like a child...

My mother cried great huge body-shaking tears of relief and joy.

My best friend snuck out of a meeting to ring me, and we laughed together.

My son - well, he giggled with his step-dad over silly names, and later stood and rang his grandparents doorbell at 8.15am this morning, and when my mother answered he told her he is going to be a big brother.

I feel so lucky.

We are SO lucky.

I have read so many posts and message boards, and I know that many of the couples I saw during the process of IVF passing through hospital corridors with their bags of injections and hands held tight have not been this lucky.

There was a woman on exactly the same timed cycle of me, that I last saw on the day of embryo transfer. I wonder about her this morning. My heart feels like bursting with the luckiness and joy of it all, whilst feeling the ache of those who have not been so lucky.

I met Alex, my lovely husband, on 12th July 2003. He got on a plane and followed his heart to see if this eccentric British woman he found on an Internet dating site could possibly be the soul mate he was searching for. Somehow, I managed to convince him I was! I fell in love with him the moment I saw him coming towards me at the airport terminal. He lifted me up, we kissed, and we have followed our hearts ever since. I gave him a card, on which I wrote the last line as;

"12th July 2003 - and we started a love affair that will never end".

I felt that then and never has it felt more vibrant and real than today.

I have felt such genuine love and support from family and relations, from old friends and new, those I can hug and cry with, and those who have reached me with encouragement and stories of their own through this site. What a journey! and it's only just begun...

I know it's frighteningly early, there are still hurdles to jump (being an old!! mother makes things trickier I am told!!). I don't care about those things today. We'll worry about them if and when they happen. My stars, either one or both of them (now there's a thought!!) have decided to stay with us and become our child(ren).

Today is about five words.

We are having a baby.

Maybe it's seven words...

We are having a baby. Or two...

"Where there is the greatest love, there are always miracles". Willa Cather