Wednesday 31 January 2007

Kindness


"Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love."
Lao Tzu

Tuesday 30 January 2007

My husband found me on the internet...


...in 2003.

Logistically, we should never have met. He was living in a different country, and I am terrified s..tless of flying. He is from Houston, Texas and was living in Europe. I had moved back to the little English village I grew up in after my divorce. He decided it was time to stop messing about and find his soul mate. I agreed.

We fell in love before we actually met up (yes, it really can happen!), and 17 days after the first email, he flew to England and swept me off my feet. I haven't found them again yet, almost four years later (this deserves a post all of it's own when lunch is not almost over and I have more time!!).

He has his own blog - he's really good at this stuff. I dig my heels in, and pretend to hate it all (you're such a techno-phobe"), but then I go away and quietly find out all about it and realise it's not so sad and geeky and time-consuming after all, and actually quite fun.

My Husband's Blog is well worth a visit, and my thanks to him for getting me started on all this - so this is what lunch breaks are for!! I'm enjoying sending posts to friends and getting emails back... I don't know if anyone actually reads this stuff, but it does make you feel as if you have a tiny corner of the world that's yours to share...


Hormones and Red Paint


So, had the "down reg" test this morning for the IVF cycle.
Quite frankly, I don't need a blood test to know my hormones are non-existent, my husband can tell you that... I have to ring tomorrow, so then I will know whether to start injecting on Thursday. Hurrah! (?)

When the injection pack arrived, my son and I opened it, and went through the contents. There were these two enormous needles, I mean we're talking two metal tubes, and my son said "Mummy, are those the injections"? I almost fainted! I now find out they're not for injecting, but for mixing or something, for the "late night injection" - whatever that is. But thank God they don't actually have to go into my body, that would have been a step too far. A "late night injection" sounds like the kind of thing to get me pregnant in the first place, huh!?

My lovely husband insists that he's "trying his best" but this is the point where I do wonder why I didn't at least try the "women seeking women" part of the dating website (Alex and I met online, 2003). A woman would get the whole hormone thing, the "I don't know why I'm crying but I can't stop" feeling, the "I want to kill you, but a hug would be nice too" bit. But as my husband is absolutely the love of my life, and I adore him, I guess I'm staying in the "Mars and Venus" trap, whilst we try and survive this bit of hormonal hell.

So, not sure what's ahead, but we'll ride this wave and see .... and HOPE!

Everything feels as if it's on hold. Life, vacations, work plans, home plans, wedding anniversary plans... Everything starts with "if I'm pregnant"...

Back in the real world though, when my son, Jak, woke up this morning in a deep haze, he whispered "Mummy?"

"Yes" I whispered back.

"What's red and smells of paint?" "

"I don't know, what is red and smells of paint"?

"Red paint", and he collapsed back under the covers in hysterics. Life's pretty wonderful sometimes, even when the joke's on you...!

To my husband, who is in London today, and thinks his wife has completely lost all sense of reality and emotional control- guilty as charged. Hang in there honey, it will get better.

My friend Sheila is coming over tonight. We'll drink tea (lots of strong tea for her, green tea for me to halt the caffeine intake), we'll munch a couple of secretive biscuits (she'll also raid the chocolate tin, and it would be rude to expect her to eat that alone, wouldn't it?), and she'll give me that woman's perspective. All will be better with the world.

I wish my sister-in-law, Gaby, lived close too. She is in Houston, Texas, my husband's birthplace. She is the most amazing woman, and I know a few tears, and big hug and a trip to the Nail Bar would put me back on my feet! I miss you, Gaby! I wish you were closer.

So, end of today's drugged rant. Loads of woman have been through this, and often, many times - I have friends who have tried IVF 6 or 7 times. That takes some serious dedication and commitment. All to have moments like my "red paint" one this morning.

Baby Briggs, you just get ready to come and join this family, we're waiting for you... and Jak has a whole load of new jokes to try out, just as good as the "red paint" one...

Friday 26 January 2007

My Lovely Husband


My husband and I have a weekend to ourselves ahead of us, and I just wanted to tell him how much I am looking forward to that!

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." Aristotle

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...???

Thursday 25 January 2007

The Worst Driver EVER -

now that's what I call a challenge!! At least my day didn't start like this!!

The challenge today - morning madness

I wonder how many other Mums are sitting at their computer during their lunch break at work feeling the way I do this morning? Loads of us, right?!

The morning started with the usual spin of activity, the snooze button being hit three times despite my husband saying he HAD to leave by 7.30am... get him packed up and sent off into the frosty day... then the madness of breakfast, loading the dogs, child and paraphernalia in to the car (did you brush your teeth? your hair looks a mess!!..) - today is keyboard lesson, so that had to be squashed into the car too (in the back seat as the door to the front was frozen shut, jeez it's cold in the UK today!!) - to arrive at school, put the keyboard into the staffroom, deposit the child into his classroom, and then realise that with all the items I did remember, I had left my bag and mobile at home. .. back home, grab bag, screech into work with dogs (yes, I take my dogs to work!) and try to get my head into "work" mode... Phew! I feel like a did a day's work already!!

I wonder how many other Mum's are still recovering from the madness of the morning...

But then I feel lucky - my son is happily at school, my dogs are stretched out in the one small sunny spot in my office, my husband just started a new job and is happy, my job is great, and I can make myself a cup of tea whenever I want and enjoy the company of others... I am guessing lots of Mums are now back home with a pile of chores and demanding infants, wishing they had my freedom...

Mind you, the pile of chores will be waiting patiently when I get home (damn, did I switch the dishwasher on before I left?...)

Anyway, work calls - I'm an HR Director, so that keeps me busy!

So, to all other Mums - and Dads - that have stumbled into work today on the back of a million other priorities - I found this great quote this morning... enjoy!

"Life - The wind may blow from any direction, but the direction in which you go depends on how you set your sails"

Wednesday 24 January 2007

Nothing unusual!

There is nothing unusual about my situation - well, that's not quite true, but there's plenty of time to talk about all that!

How does everyone juggle the "challenge of life"? Kids, pets, work, home, husbands, wives etc etc. Well, I wondered if this were the place to find out! Maybe it's a place to reach out across the world and share a laugh, a story and maybe even a tear sometimes, in the challenges that all of us face every day in order the earn the title of being "human". Whatever that means!

If you've found this blog, and are actually reading it, then I am truly amazed! My husband is the whizz at this, not me. He has a wonderful blog, and he writes with passion about his friends and family. I resist this type of technology, I dig in my heels and say it's "sad" and "silly". But maybe he's right, and world is linked in a million ways I don't quite get. So, my step into the world of blogging begins. ..