The Result

Three cycles of IVF, nine months, hundreds of injections and pills and bruises and side-effects, two bouts of OHSS, all my money, enormous stress and heartache and many wet pillows: all worth it. At least one little embryo has snuggled in and taken root in my belly, now busy growing and changing and becoming more robust every day. I'll have a scan next month to do a headcount and see if I have a singleton or twins. Gulp.

So I am very grateful to my sperm donor, whoever he is. Despite the fact that he will never be any kind of a father to these beings, I am thinking of him today, on Fathers' Day, and hoping he knows what a gift he has given.

Of course I am also thinking of Thomas. Pickle made the most wonderful Fathers' Day card at school. On the front is an intricate design of hearts and his violin (relevant to the only true memory she has of him), but it's the words which make it:

For those of you not fluent in five-year-old, the translation is this:

'Hi Dad. I hope you do survive. I do dear Dad. I want to dig you up. I love you. I love you. I do love you.'

Broken Shells

So, six weeks of injecting hormones and thousands of pounds later (keep breathing Lunar; just breathe and mention your shop), my good friend and neighbour drove me to the clinic to welcome one of my snow babies home. 

Sitting in the waiting room, my phone started to sing. Two missed messages, both from the embryologist asking me to phone her. I had a cold couple of minutes to wait before she led us into her office. No snow babies. No transfer today. Both protective shells had broken in the freeze and the thaw and those precious cells inside now had no hope of life.

As she spoke, my own shell cracked open and a chill draught touched my heart. You might not have known, though. I calmly listened to her explanation, asked sensible questions, insisted on the earliest possible date for the next step and left with smiles and thanks for the staff, because I didn't want them to feel bad. I'm very good at taking bad news. (I actually cut short the commiserations of the nurse who rang to say Thomas had died because I needed to be with Pickle while she had breakfast.) Life just goes on. Except for when it doesn't.

Halfway down the corridor some tears found the exit and I stopped for a hug. We talked in the car about what I could do next, but my brain wasn't really engaged. At home, I sat on my bed and just stared out the window for half an hour, no thoughts or emotions, just a subtle adjustment to the new world order. Then I had a nap and made Pickle's tea. It was the next day, glancing up at myself while brushing my teeth, that I really cried.

I will try again, but first my body needs a month to let this batch of hormones go and be ready for more. And I need this time to be ready for more too. No-one said it was easy and they were all right.

But it is a lot easier for having my girl with me. We are leaving love notes for each other to find,

spontaneously charging each other for hugs

and enjoying the sun when it shines.

Pickle has made progress in her career as a paleontologist, excavating fossils including a chick in its shell and in the process learning why paleontologists traditionally work outside:

There is always hope.

Trying Again

I am trying again. I am busy injecting myself, taking pills and supplements, drinking herbs and changing patches in a second attempt at creating a baby. (This is how you do it, yes?) IVF is perhaps not for the sane-hearted. You really have to want this so badly you are prepared to put yourself (and, in my case, the five-year-old I live with) through a brief menopause (waking up thinking, Why is my house so damn HOT?), then extreme PMT (be warned: this is where I am now, although mostly I'm just weeping rather than shouting) and all manner of undignified scans (although I love seeing my amazing insides on the screen). So, some time in the first half of March one of my snow babies (frozen embryos) will be brought home to my womb, hopefully to snuggle in safe and sound (which is what didn't happen last time). After the transfer is the epic two-week wait until I can do a pregnancy test.

It is a good time to be making a baby. The flowers are coming out; we have had a couple of days of strong sun; long-tailed tits are eating fatballs outside my window; a red admiral is against the pane; and my friends are having babies, just to prove it really can be done and Pickle wasn't some kind of fluke.

Not a fluke, but still a miracle which dazzles me every day. And so many days... Pickle is five now. Five whole years. We went to a puppet show at the theatre with one of her friends and had a little party at our house, with games and balloons and party food and the splendid diplodocus cake her Gappy had made with her (to Pickle's design).

Her actual birthday was a school day, so we stopped on the way home for hot chocolate, then a lot of present opening.

I hadn't expected Pickle to be at school on her birthday because I didn't think she would be going back after half term. She began in January, then quickly became really ill and missed the bit when her friends who'd started with her became confident. She hated it and was miserable for a long time. Holding to my belief that she would love school if she could get over this first insecurity, while constantly wondering if I was just putting her through hell for no reason, has been the hardest thing, apart from getting us through without Thomas, that I have done as a parent. There is such a strong desire to make her happy and I could have done that so easily. I could have quit at any moment and decided she wouldn't go to school. Pickle would have been delighted and I would have been very relieved. I came very close so many times, but held my nerve. I had seriously thought about home schooling, at least for the first few years, but her school has allowed me and other parents to send our children part-time. Pickle goes three days a week and enjoys it. She often doesn't want to get out of bed and she hates to be rushed getting ready, but she is full of good things when she comes home and is proud of what she is learning.

We do some home schooling still, but I'm happy if that happens in an informal way and trips out definitely count. Recently we went to The Eden Project with friends. The girls loved dressing up.

I failed to interest Pickle in some great sculpture.

We saw lots of wonderful plants and listenend to an accordian-playing storyteller with a beautiful throne.

In the tropical biome, the children took their tops off and discovered they could cool themselves by slathering cold mud over their bellies. They looked wonderfully feral but my camera couldn't withstand the humidity so no pictures.

So, my girl is now five. I am walking a very wobbly hormonal tightrope. A month from now I may be pregnant. Thank heavens for spring!

The Other Side

Well, a splendid new year to you all. Whether you turned with the sun or the calendar, here we all are, safely on the other side. It's much sunnier here. And, as we are past Christmas, I can now show you one of the name signs I made this (no, last) year:

I had a little exhibition in the local cafe, as I have for a few years:

and autumn came in exceptionally splendid colour:

We, very sadly, had our last day at Forest School. Pickle climbed trees (of course),

then the mums had had enough of the freezing cold and we went into the hut to make clay pots,

and dress up as a ram.

When we thought all the fun was over, we found an excavator in the car park!

We were all (mums definitely included) sorry to leave, but luckily at home we have the best toy ever - a washing machine box (note 'cat flap' onto sofa):

Pickle's final day at her superb Montessori nursery came and she was a gender-bending Jack Frost in their Christmas play:

Tip for parents here: it takes a VERY long time for liquid eyeliner to come off a child's face. About a week, in fact.

And then, after all that picture-door opening and day-counting and decorating and wrapping and card-making... it was Christmas! I think last year Pickle couldn't anticipate so well, but this year she really struggled with the waiting. But it was all worth it. She spent the first 24 hours in her dinosaur onesie and was kept in a constant state of delight with presents and lights and music and treaty food and all manner of rules (I love a rule) relaxed.

We spent Christmas morning together, just the two of us, for the first time. I had been worried it somehow wouldn't be special - wouldn't feel Christmassy. This is linked to my suspicion that just Pickle and I aren't enough people to really feel like a family. Basically, I feel there should be more squabbling and a complexity of dynamics. I thought a lot about the last time we were home for Christmas, in 2010:

but was rescued from my secret maudlin thoughts by Christmas dinner with our wonderful neighbours and an afternoon of more presents, much food and some ridiculous fashion attempts with a fibre-optic lamp.

And throughout all these doings, I have been through my first cycle of IVF. I never really believe things will be as tough as people say, until I do them and discover, yes, this is really tough in every way. As well as the emotional double-whammy of doing a really intense thing while injecting yourself with hormones, I had a bad reaction to some of the drugs (OHSS if you're in the know) and it all got a bit scary at the point I couldn't quite take a full breath. I was put on extreme rest (an older, and old-school, nurse gave me a proper scolding about what I had been doing (which I thought was resting). She actually wagged her finger and told me I was not allowed out the house or to stand up much at all. This became boring within minutes but I was a good patient and I'm fine... but no baby. It was amazing watching (on a screen, obvs) the little embryo being squirted into my uterus (twice, in fact, as it accidentally got sucked back out!) and the doctors were excited about the quality of my embryos... but it just didn't snuggle down and stick. 

So, this month we go again, but without the drugs which made me ill, because I have two little snow babies (frozen embryos) waiting for their chance at life. And such a beautiful world to welcome them into:

When gorse is in blossom, love is in fashion:

A Time to Rest, plus Breasts, Beer, Boots - oh, and a Baby

So, my husband died and I've had a couple of years adjusting to the emotional and practical realities of single parenting while grieving him. I have stopped hoping that one day I will feel unmitigated joy again. Those times have gone. No matter how good, it would always be better if I could be there with him, or catch his eye at the funny moment, or tell him about it afterwards. Or see his pride in our marvellous daughter. Or hers in him.

But all is not lost. Being diagnosed as coeliac was a hassle I didn't want to confront so soon after Thomas's death, but I feel physically and emotionally so much better for being off the gluten which freaks out my body. I feel I am a new and improved person and I wish Thomas could have known me now.

The BRCA1 diagnosis a year in was a real blow and I wish I had known in advance it would take another whole year before the surgeon agreed to take off my breasts. But now I am healing beautifully  and my good girl is over the insecurity she felt when she saw the person who forms her bedrock so vulnerable. She has a new Big Girl bed and is relishing this rite of passage. It has confirmed to me how often unpleasant and difficult behaviour in children is a result of a need not being met - most likely not recognised, perhaps even by themselves. I doubt us grown-ups are much different. Who amongst us, with all needs met and held safe in a loving community against future needs, would rock the boat? No - then we call down the strong winds and sail on, leaving laughter in our wake.

So it's been a tough couple of years but I feel I'm over the highest hurdles. The grief marathon is always the most gruelling thing, but I have found a pace I can maintain and I have friends handing out water at regular intervals. I can do this. It would seem to be a time to rest and recuperate now. To focus on my creativity, on doing all those extra things I plan with Pickle. To really make my home the way I would love it to be and to read all those enticing books which line my walls. I feel I have earned a few years of just being, letting the sadness ebb and flow as it will and savouring all the good things I have summoned to myself as Pickle grows and learns and flourishes. I feel I deserve a bit of a life-holiday.

But that is just not my style. I am naturally more of a headlong-into-the-storm kind, so years of taking it easy just don't sound like fun. No. What I actually need in my over-stretched single-parent life, I have decided, is another child.

Yes! I hear you cry. What a sane and practical idea! We totally see how this will work out fine.

Great. I'm so glad you agree.

However, there is still the tricky matter of how. Although Thomas never acquired the organisational skills to keep a pair of socks within the same continent, he was all over the sperm-production side of things and so I rather left that to him and failed to learn how to do it myself. I can get very Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves about fixing stuff or re-pressurising my boiler or deciding a law is unjust and trying to get it changed (a story for another day), but this baby lark, which is what us women are supposed to be good at, has me stumped. I need help.

I was all set to adopt, but reading the blogs and message boards online gave me a more realistic picture than the one presented by the agencies and I felt it was too big a risk for Pickle, having already lost her Dada, to bring someone into our family who was damaged in some way and would need so much from me that I might have too little left for my beloved girl. I was sad to let that idea go and remain sad about all the children in such devastating need of love and security, but I no longer think I can help them. Fostering, some long way into the future, is still an option.

Of course then I thought of all the many ways I could find myself pregnant. Some felt immediately repulsive, others I took a couple of tentative steps into exploring before turning back. After years of essential oils and herb healing, living very close to the land and spending long times silent, of buying organic and loving nature with increasing devotion, I found myself left with one option: a clinic.

In so many ways this is not where I ever expected to be. Of course I thought I would have breasts my whole life. I thought my husband would live into his fifties and, if he survived his first heart transplant, into his seventies. I thought I would make children the easy and fun way. I thought a lot of things. What I think now is that the universe is clearly following some plan other than my own but I daren't ask for change because right now that plan includes my daughter being happy and healthy and bright and by my side. There is nothing I would swap for that.

But I am aware of Pickle's other side. Her lonely side. It would of course be best if Thomas were holding her other hand, or even if there were a little string of paper-doll children joining one of our big hands to the other. Many people, including me, think it would be best for Pickle if I had another relationship. I just can't. I'm not ready and I don't want to and No. Sorry but No. So what if she had a little sibling? Even a smaller person would bring complexity to our intense fire girl-fire woman dynamic and I think that would be a very good thing. I am aware of how desperately needy I am of Pickle. I try to hold myself tall and never lean, but I fear doing it and I would never want her to feel she had to supprt the weight of my need and my sorrow alone. What she needs is a friend and all siblings are great friends, right? Right. So, to the clinic.

I had visions of a no-drugs way, but have discounted that. I don't want to waste time on a process with such a low success rate (I will not really feel safe until my ovaries are out) and I don't want to spend thousands of pounds I don't really have. (Do please pop along to my Etsy shop!) But most of all I really do not want to go through the rollercoaster of trying and failing any more times than I have to because I cannot do that without dragging poor Pickle round with me. No matter how Fine thank you! I pretend to be, I look round to find Pickle face down on a shop floor screaming her heart out and I think, Yes, I feel like doing that too.

So, I have settled on the cosy-sounding Gentle IVF. Essentially, a much lower dose of drugs to force my blessed body to ovulate within office hours (a true fact!) and only one fertilised egg implanted at a time because a multiple birth seems laughably ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that it could still happen, but I hope not. One sibling for my girl. One more child for me. Then an oopherectomy (isn't that a lovely word?) and then all I have to do is raise two children single-handedly. Phew! And I said I didn't want a rest.

Meanwhile, Thomas is busy supporting this whole crazy enterprise with his artwork. Here is the latest addition to my Etsy shop, a combination of all his favourite things, it seems:

If I am able to bring a new person into this world, I know I will sadly miss having a strong partner by my side and keenly mourn the loss of my breasts too, but in my madness I somehow feel this new child will never be quite fatherless, even if they cannot or do not find their Donor Dad. There will always be a tune on the breeze from one of the finest fathers I have had the honour of knowing.