The Mission

I have been focussed on little other than meeting Pickle's needs and trying to conceive for a very long time. Now that I have an eyelash being or two meshing with my body, I find myself uncomfortably aware of the silence when I shake the coffers. In a bid to remedy this, I am determined to organise my little business so that it actually produces an income, rather than taking up lots of happy hours and producing lots of art and writing no-one ever sees. So, already I have listed four new things in my Etsy shop which had previously been languishing in my livingroom. I have been known to sell from my kitchen wall before, but that really doesn't work as a business plan.

I have a new small ink-on-canvas work called Reaching For The Light. The metallic inks do weird things to the light when I photograph them, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the verdant, abundant feel of it:

And I have had three more designs made into greetings cards.

Poppy:

Tree in Sunny Field:

and Reaching For The Light:

My health is better than it has been for a while, so I will keep working and keep posting about my new creations, human or otherwise.

And thank you so much for all the love and good wishes. It takes a village to raise a child, or do any much, I find. Thank you for being my virtual village x

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.'

The Wait

Much has happened and some of it has been this:

I have occasionally remembered to photograph a name sign before I send it off. This one has gone to Canada to celebrate a wonderful new baby:

I had a birthday. I don't like having  a party for me, but my good friend was having a birthday gathering in their woods, so I came along on the assurance that no-one would sing that song! Fine folk sat about a fire chatting and eating.

Children did children things

and a good time was had by all. Here I am, a year older:

Pickle and I have been spending happy hours in our jungle garden. We can get all the way through the woods now! Well, we could, but now the nettles have grown up so only I can again - but that's the deal with jungles.

Pickle has been angling for inclusion in an eighties public service advert for road safety:

doing yoga with her Gappy:

and always finding secret places to be. Here she is at Westonbirt Arboretum - a place of tree magic and very much beauty in any season:

We were with her cousins and my siblings and their families and our parents - a rare gathering of the tribe.

Yesterday was Pickle's first ever Sports Day. We both enjoyed it and I was unexpectedly moved by the sight of her valiantly hopping along in a sack. Here she is, slowing right down during the sprint to smile and wave at me:

Sometimes the magic of moments happens invisibly, in the heart, and sometimes there is actual magic just hiding down a badger holt if you have eyes to see. Luckily for us, our neighbour has those feyfox eyes and spotted real Goblin's Gold. It is luminescent moss and it's fancy name is Schistostega and it lives in dark places where the sunlight mosses cannot thrive and overwhelm it. It's not easy to capture the amazing vividness of its glow in a photograph, but this is my best attempt:

And that's not even the most magical thing! I am on my third and final round of IVF. This round has been even tougher than the others and for most of it I was in quite a gloom, just going through the motions of injections and pills and scans and waiting. My self-esteem has reached record lows and physically it has been tough too. I now have OHSS and, without breasts, that makes me this shape:

However, the epic two-week wait is nearly over and I can do a pregnancy test in a couple of days. Then, hopefully, I will have a happier reason to look like Mr Greedy.

Shuffle Fail

So, I was happily holding forth on the importance of education, using the example of a Sudanese refugee who had fled with her books (while Pickle was trying to eat her breakfast) when I felt my point somewhat undermined by Killing in the Name segueing into Another Brick in the Wall. Shuffle, sometimes you disappoint me.

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!

Day of the Dreads

Thomas died three years ago today.

Gappy, Pickle and I and a couple of friends went up our hill to the Dada Lump. It's not as obvious as it once was, but still makes a good seat.

We lit a little fire (Thomas always made a fire) to burn some special things.

We ate (another of his favourite passtimes); even Pickle who is still too poorly to eat much.

 Treasures were hung in hedges and buried in the earth, but my favourite thing was this:

I hung all my splendid dreads, wool and all, in the branches of the hawthorn tree which grows above Thomas's head. He always wanted dreads, so now he has mine.

I don't know how long they'll last; I expect birds will make good use of them for nests.

The wind may take one or two, possibly for miles.

Or they may just dangle about, confusing the fat and happy sheep.

The hundred trees, planted by Thomas's wider community and lovingly tended by his father when he visits Pickle and I, are flourishing. It is a good place, this land which holds the Dada Lump. I am very grateful.

Pickle was tired and cold, so we blew kisses to Primrose and Fey, who also lie up here; put out the fire in the traditional manner (a very quick way to warm one's cockles) and headed for the nearest pizza.

It has been a tough day, but also it has been just right.