Hormones in a bag

We have a lovely big new fridge in our house. Stainless steel, double doors, lots of freezer space, special vegetable drawers, the whole shebang. Really, it would make any domestic goddess proud! And, no, it does not have an ice-machine. It is really not that hot here in the low lands.

It has so many shelves and drawers that it could easily fit food for a family. To help us achieve that, I went out to get the new lot of fertility drugs today. A whole bag full of them. They now compete for shelve space with my homemade pesto and the delicious organic Cheddar my parents in law brought us. They have a different way of arriving in my tummy though!

Lovely Sunday

Who can ask for a better way to spend a Sunday?

The clocks went back this morning, which straight away meant that we didn't have to feel guilty about having a lie in this morning. What would normally have been 11:30 am was instead 10:30 am... a perfectly respectible time to get up on a Sunday morning!

And then for breakfast, we treated ourselves to a cafe latte, freshly squeezed orange juice, the last of the season's raspberries and a cheese and ham toasty! I then treated myself to an eagerly awaited new toy... a MacBook on which I'm now writing this post (feeling very smug that I've got it all updated and running nicely after spending a day or so getting our new wireless network and ADSL connection sorted).

I'm actually feeling a bit merry. I've recently started to treat myself with an occassional glass of wine or a gin and tonic after spending about a year almost T-total (except for the occassional glass of champagne). I therefore allowed myself to attend the bi-annual wine tasting event organised by our excellent local delicatessen, Gransjean. With approximately 130 different wines to taste, it's difficult not to get a little tipsy, despite only tasting a small sip at a time. We tried about 20 of the wines, since we're admittedly a little snobby. We did try some new world wines though and were pleasantly suprised with some Argentinian and even some Canadian wine! And to top things off, the wine is complemented with a fine selection of cheeses and meats from around the world. For only €7.50 per person, it's a real bargain and such a nice treat!

So, do I feel guilty about this little endulgement in light of the fact that we're trying so hard to create our little Flonny? Not at all. I've been thinking long and hard on this subject for a few weeks now. I know that drinking alcohol is probably not the best thing to do when undertaking ICSI. But I know that I limit my consumption to very sensible quantities, no longer feeling the urge to binge drink like I used to (and, I must say, I was very good at it). But having an occassional glass of wine makes me feel relaxed and warm inside. To quote the great Brit-pop band "Blur", it gives me a sense of enourmous well being. I personally think that this positive state of mind will more than offset any minor detrimental physical effects that an occassional G&T may incurr. And this is my new tantra. As much as I want to have a child, I am not prepared to sacrifice my life for it. I refuse to be a slave to this urge to reproduce. As much as I want to bring another life into the world, I can't do so at the expense of my own, else what's the point? Surely this is just substitution... one life for another. I want my child to experience what life has to offer, to be wrapped in it's rich tapesty, but to do so I need to be familiar with it myself. I need that will to live life myself so that I can enthuse my child with it and give my child the opportunity to prosper.

I'm so happy that I went out and enjoyed myself with Flo. I'm happy that, despite the shit that we've been through and the troubles that we're having bringing a new life into the world, that we still have the energy to live our own lives. It's these moments that make me feel like life is worth living! It's these moments that give me the strength to play natures games... despite being dealt a crappy hand, we're still going to win this game.

Text book

Text book condition is what the gyneacologist called the state of my uterus and ovaries this morning. The pill has done its job for the past three weeks and has surpressed follicle activity. So not one enthusiastic follicle leading the way. In fact no follicles at all to be seen. This made Jonny enquire about the resolution of the ultrasound image of my insides on the screen that we were admiring; structures smaller than 2mm cannot be seen.

This is exactly the outcome we had hoped for. Now all follicles that are candidates for selection and growth by the follicle stimulating hormones (FSH) have an equal opportunity. Would that make me an equal opportunity employer of eggs? With these perfect starting conditions we now have to wait for my period to arrive. Next week will be the start of our third try!

Back to the future

We have now lived in our new house for just over four weeks. We manoeuvre around the boxes that remain unopened. We carefully tread around the tools from the work men that are still around every other day. We put up with the mess they make and the dust on our clean clothes. The curtains made of newspapers are very yellow by now and there are large pieces of garbage scattered around the house since we forgot the pick-up appointment with the council. The mess is infuriating at times and the amount of work still to be done daunting, but we love it.

Slowly everything is finding its place and the house is coming together. We have been large-scale users of bin liners and the house is looking better every day. Not in the last place because we had Jonny's parents staying over for a few days. That forced us to get a bit more organised quickly. At least cosmetically, since it mainly involved moving boxes around.

Jonny and his dad put the immensely heavy glass doors on our new Pax cupboard, his dad put the first plants in our garden and his mum got her hands on our dirty counter top after chasing our Polish builders away. Although born in England, Polish was my mother in law's first language. So she told them in Polish not to put their dirty things on the freshly cleaned surface. It must have quite shocked them, but it worked!

We are now still waiting for our ADSL-connection. For the last month we have been using a dial-up connection. It takes ages to load up pages with anything other than plain text and it feels like we have been catapulted back to the early nineties. Tomorrow we should have ADSL again so that will be a weekend full of serving the internet! Or would that be the internet serving us?

Autumn break

When I was little my mum used to take me shopping for a winter coat in the autumn break. It was easy to remember when the autumn break was since my brother's birthday was always somewhere in that week. So for me the autumn break always marked the proper beginning of the autumn and it getting colder again. The first day after the break I always cycled to school proudly showing off my new coat. With the buttons still undone, since invariably it was still slightly too warm for the new coat with toggles. Or whatever closing method was in vogue that season.

The last time I got myself a new coat was when we still lived in Rotterdam, what now seems like a lifetime ago. A long green duffel coat with deep pockets and a long zipper. It has done a good job over the years, protecting me from the cold in St Petersburg and seeing me through New Year's Eve on the Red Square (Jonny's arms around me also helped or was it the vodka we consumed?). By now the zipper has stopped functioning so it would only keep me warm those first few days after the autumn break.

Unlike yesteryear, not everybody in the Netherlands has the autumn break in the same week. When you break is now determined by the region you live in. So I am not sure if our region now officially has the autumn break or whether it is next week. Regardless, since it is my brother's birthday this week, I think it is time to go out and find myself a new winter coat.

I will then cycle, with the buttons of my new coat undone of course, to the lovely vegetable stall where I get our fruit and veg from. They now have wonderful big pumpkins on display, a large variety of mushrooms, cranberries and many different apples. Bye bye to salads, hello stews and soups!

Hospital stories

It has been quite an eventful last few days. On Saturday we went back to the hospital (more later), Sunday we were at A&E since Jonny accidentally spilled some Hammerite in his left eye (he's fine now, although he had a red eye rim for a couple of days). So Sunday night I jokingly remarked that I wasn't going back to the hospital on Monday. How wrong I was...

On Monday the builders came around to finish off some small jobs in and around the house. One of them being cutting some tiles in the kitchen to fit the kitchen properly. One bit was particularly difficult to reach so he needed to have a good close look at it. This resulted in a tile cutting flying in to one of his eyes. So back to A&E. He is now doing fine too.

Officially we have started with IVF treatment number three. Hopefully third time lucky. Since Saturday I am taking the pill in order to downregulate any enthusiastic follicles. This should give them the chance to growth all at the same rate. I also had some blood taken to determine my FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) level.This was raised. Although this can vary from month to month, it is indicative of the repsonsiveness to the hyperstimulation drugs. That will be low. I was absolutely gutted.

It feels like no amount of healthy living, organic food and expensive supplements will do the trick for us. We just need copious amounts of luck. And some more.

We have moved!

Last week we moved into our new house. Now we are not only camping in the bed room, but also in the living room, the kitchen and the bathroom. To say it is a bit messy is an understatement. But it is our very own messy house and it is gorgeous and lovely.

The internet connection has not moved yet unfortunately so we are not online at the moment. This post is costing me two teas in a bar with wireless connection. Nor do we have telephone. At night we play board games.

You can reach us on our mobiles though! As soon as we are online again, we will reply to your emails and update the blog properly with pictures of our trip to Copenhagen (what a great city!) and pictures of the house wíth furniture. Like the builder remarked last week: it now has a soul.

PS: the kitties are okay, they are still having fun exploring all the corners and finding new favourite spots to lie in. Funnily enough these spots seem to coincide with our favourite spots to sit!