Forgetting

I frighten myself sometimes at how easily I can forget something.

Not facts, or figures, or deadlines, but bigger things. Important things. Things you can't always write down in a calendar or in a few words.

Just like the previous year and a half, the last few months have been filled with trying to conceive and all that comes with it, but while forgetting what it is all for.

'Trying to conceive' has almost become a parody of itself, an unreal superficial lifestyle of sorts with it's own specific unglamorous trappings, and no substance. Doing things without even thinking, for no other reason than they must be done. Charting temperatures, popping vitamins, wazzing on sticks, pushing for appointments, waiting for tests.

It's amazing to think that I forget why we have knots in our stomachs for the last days of every cycle, and why we feel like thrashing neighbourhood cats when another last day becomes a first. Maybe it's routine, familiarity breeds contempt and all that, or maybe it's the old self-preservation chestnut.

A disruption in the process, like we had last week, makes you stop and allows you to think. All the trappings, peripherals, and figures fade away to unimportance and you are left with nothing. Then you remember.

There is a real reason behind trying to get the hospital to offer us the IUI, a real reason behind chasing those appointments, and behind learning how to give an injection. There is a real reason behind why ET has filled her belly with drugs and now follicles, and a real reason why we spent the lowest 48 hours I've ever known going back and forth trying to make one single decision.

The reason is that we desperately want a family. That is all.

We understand the risks, many of which you have laid out clearly and carefully, we truly do. We know that we could make them completely disappear by just deciding to let this one pass.

We know that we probably would have other opportunities, less risky on paper, but intangible here and now. The chances of 'naturally' conceiving multiples with however many eggs we end up being left with now, are no greater than the chances of conceiving them with the 3 eggs we all wanted with a trigger and IUI.

It's statistics to justify a decision, but that's all the hospital have to go on in their decision, and it's all we have now in ours.

We are responding, not reacting, to a very real but small calculated risk. One that we will take for the most real of reasons, we simply remember how much we want to, and it feels right.

ET is not a labrador retriever

So seven became six. One poor bugger vanished into the darkness overnight.

The poor follicle was not alone, nurse Janneke became a balding bearded male nurse, much to ET's surprise.

All of those six have shown growth. On the left, a 12mm and a 13mm, and on the right, two 14mm, a 16mm, and a 17mm.

Basically, 2 small, 2 possible, and 2 right on track.

So the IUI is canceled. Next week we make an appointment to see what the plan is from here.

If we had the IUI, we would run a 2-5% risk of multiples. 1 or 2% of those multiples would be 3 or more.

We asked about trying ourselves this month, he kept to the official line that they do not recommend that we try to conceive.

He said he would not recommend that we use the trigger shot, and to be honest I wouldn't have considered that anyway.

He told us that people have ignored this advice in the past, and come back with multiples, but "not in large numbers".

Right here, right now, we have a golden opportunity to get what we want. Our chances of turning around the 25 failures this month are much improved. We could get pregnant.

But we run a risk of a multiple pregnancy, impacting mother and babies, raising the risk of the unthinkable.

Do we go with our hearts, and be irresponsible towards lives that don't even exist, or do we sulk for a month or two, hoping that long term sensibility pays off?

This is not a choice we should have to make. This is not fair.

We're lost.

Of mice and men

Nurse Janneke meant business.

I clearly wasn't going to get any knock-knock jokes from this member of the Dutch medical profession.

"You get undressed in there madam, and the chair over there is for you sir."

Now, ET is shorter than the average Irish woman, and the Dutch are a very tall race. Everything caters for that, including examination chairs. Having to take a wee hop and jump while naked from the waist down, in order to clamber up into the chair, is quite hard to do gracefully.

I sat back and waited for the main event to start. Like a cross between COPS and some night vision badger watch show, the dildo-cam tunneled it's way though the grainy black-and-whiteness towards a blob that Janneke announced was ET's left ovary.

She measured and pointed out a couple of other blobs, which from here on out we'll call follicle number one, and two. Well done left Goldilock!

Off she went, twisting and turning and burrowing in the direction of the right Goldilock in search of a much desired third follicle.

There it was, our third follicle, fat and round. Party time.

We were somewhat less amused to see a fourth. Not to mention a fifth, and a sixth, and oh why the fuck not, a seventh.

With one measuring 12mm, two at 10mm, two at 11mm, and two at 14mm, it was like Noah's ovarian ark.

Janneke and her clip-board refused to be influenced into saying whether this was normal, or how likely it was there would be further growth in all of them or not.

All would be revealed to us by phone later in the afternoon.

So, none the wiser, I gathered myself. My walking follicle farm for a spouse put her pants back on and we left.

Seven hours later, one for every double crossing follicle, the hospital called. Basically, seven are way too many, and also, being suspiciously close in size the probability is that most of them would mature.

Tomorrow morning we go back for another ultrasound to measure their growth again.

Unless there is a real sign that at least 4 of them are not growing at the same rate as the others, the IUI will be canceled.

No IUI.

Do you think there is anything else they could say that would make it any worse right now?

Oh yes there is.

Not that we have to listen, but due to the number, and subsequent risk of multiples, they recommend we use contraception for the rest of the month.

We started today looking forward to an IUI, a real life shot at getting real life pregnant.

We finish today needing condoms.

The best laid plans.