Madame G's words

I have been feeling better, especially since receiving the report from the laboratory about the two frozen blasts. I feel like a proud mother. I almost don't want to use them. I'd just like to keep them with me my whole life and know that they're mine.

Tacked to my refrigerator I have a few things. There is the payment request for my son's emergency visit to the hospital in July. Its a menial sum of about 7 euros and I have no idea why it's still not paid. Billing in France is strange like that. Bills pop up months later. The other paper is a scribbled note from a neighbor who lives a few blocks away. He hit our car one night with his moped. He was drunk. It was during the World Cup game and he said he'd borrowed his sons bike to go for a spin. We never asked him to do the repairs. Our car is a piece of crap anyway. Another paper has the date for the next appointment with my RE, December 18th at 3:40. I have placed that one in the middle. I'm not likely to forget it but I just want it there to remind me that there is advancement. There is some hope. The last piece of paper is from our friend in Normandy, Madame G. Madame G is a silly extravagance of ours. She's a clairvoyante. We feel particularly attached to her because she was someone my husband went to when he was very down and having serious relationship problems over seven years ago. What she predicted for him was so right it was scary. At the time he thought she was full of it. Two weeks later I dropped into his life. It's goose bump scary the things she tells us each year when we go see her. I won't list them all here but suffice to say that she put our meeting on the map down to the month. She has been so right about so much that when she says something our ears prick up and we listen intently because as surprising as some of the things sound at the time they almost always come true.

We often write to Madame G and most recently in August we wrote her to get some advice about a financial matter because she's never been wrong yet. In her letter she wrote us back and said "please do not worry one bit about having a second baby. I see another IVF bringing good results and you will have that little girl I keep telling you about." She has always assured us of this from the beginning. For the record so have other people through our past. Madame G though has that rock solid record to back her up. Even if you don't believe in this sort of stuff, understand what comfort I find in looking at that piece of paper and feeling like someone other than me believes that this will eventually happen. That piece of paper and her confident words motivate me to continue. It makes me feel like "yeah, what if someone is waiting for us?" It motivates me because I feel like we can't give up until all of our IVFs, all four of them and then some have been exhausted. We're only halfway there. We still have a long way to go but I'm sure we'll get there.

The two frozen blasts

I don't know if it was a prank call or not but I got a message from Dr. Dieu's lab folks last week informing me that I have two frozen embryos. Apparently I have two blastocytes on ice. I almost dropped down on my knees when I heard. It didn't even occur to me that any had survived. In the past I've been so riddled with the bad egg moniker that I just assumed all of them were going to go bad again. I always roll my eyes when I get the permission form for freezing the eggs. "Yeah like I'll need this!" This time I even forgot to fill it out and the nurse had to chase me down the hallway to remind me to sign it.

Am I wrong to be feeling a slight spark of hope? I know the success rates for FET are not fabulous but I'm just so happy that two of my little guys have pulled through. I'd just like to sit there and stare at them for a few hours, admiring.

This really means a lot to me. It means I had a good stimulation and good eggs. It just means that they didn't attach for some reason. It's just a simple technical problem. It's not like the entire system is en panne.

Meanwhile the reason the embryos won't attach continues to dog me. The successful birth of our baby boy throws nearly all physical problems out the window. The uterus is apparently in good working order and the birth wasn't that long ago. So why isn't this working? Am I just hanging out in the bad statistic crowd?

The day after failure - a backdated post

Here is another backdated post. Sorry if all this is depressing. I really have gotten beyond all this by now and I'm feeling a lot better. I feel like keeping these unposted is unhealthy somehow. I guess it's necessary like emotional vomit.

And thank you so much for your comments. I'm really touched.

Tuesday, November 21st

Today, one day later and another night of restless sleep. It is very hard getting out of the bed. My legs feel like weights were attached to my feet as I slept. The effort at swinging them over causes me to actually groan out loud. Little S comes and offers me two broken potato chips, food left over from last night impromtu dinner. He looks at me remarking with his soulful little baby eyes that something is not quite right. Maybe all that strong holding, hugging and kissing yesterday had something to do with it. Definitely the tears and puffy eyes were something un-mommy like. I am a bad mother. I find it impossible to dash off into another room and let my emotions pitter patter out onto a kleenex. Everything is raw and right there. I am in no shape to hide behind the bathroom wall for ten minutes, every ten minutes. It's just too much and it comes up too quickly. I don't often see it coming until it hits me like a runaway train.

Little S and I stumble through breakfast and still the tears flow, dripping into a cup of coffee I make to give me something to do. Why is it that everything is so much more painful in the morning? Why is so much amplified upon waking?

The storm is bringing thunder and overcast skies. I feel utterly despondant. My neighbor fraps at the door and I jump, startled at the sound. I am so damned jumpy. "Can he borrow the key for our mutual outdoor passageway so he can move some furniture?" "key..." I think staring off absently. He is asking me something nearly impossible. He is asking me to think. He is asking me to interact. We both look down at a fat blackbird delivered on my doorstep by one of my cats. "How fitting" I say to myself. I give him the key trying to remain composed but knowing full well I look like a refugee suffering through a war. He must have noticed. I do not really care.

Later I call the doctor's office. Can I get the beta a little earlier? Yes I am sure it's not just spotting. Yes it's requiring me to use more than a pnty liner. Can I please have the test a few days early. Thank you. My heart and mind need to put this whole thing to rest. I'm relieved for the opportunity for closure.

Seb calls me back. "You know I was thinking, and I don't know how you feel, but I think we shouldn't give up so quickly." Something inside of me flickers a little. "I think if it's worth having than it's worth fighting for" He says warming my frozen heart just a little. Throwing me the tiniest food pellets of hope. I quickly scarf them down and digest them before he has time to throw any more. "That is unless you want to stop." His voice lowers when he says this and I am quick to say "No, we can't stop." What I feel like saying is "...it won't let me stop" but if I say this it will be necessary to explain the it. The it which is elusive and difficult for even me to understand. The it that is in the heart of every woman who ever longed for a child. The it that is causing all this pain right now.

IVF two has failed - a backdated post

This post is backdated from Monday. Like I said I kept a diary even though I couldn't post the entries. Writing is such a natural form of therapy in infertility. It really helps clear the heart and mind.

Know that I feel a lot better than I did when this first happened. It is very bad and then it gets slightly better. I know the pattern now. At the end of two days the total darkness lifts and there is small shaft of light. At the end of two weeks it's still blurry but images start coming into focus. At the end of two months you feel like a slightly altered version of your old self.

Monday, November 20th

I guess I had need to worry about the weekend. Call it foresight, I mean if you believe in that sort of stuff. We women are so tense and turned inward during all this cycling that it would come as no surprise that there would be some inner female voice whispering the outcome. And so to make a long story well, even longer, the weekend played out very much like I hoped it wouldn't and feared it would. Somehow it still caught me completely off guard.

It's Sunday night and I run for a quick last pee before tucking myself into bed. I sit there, hurrying due to the cold, and when I glance down I am suddenly stung by fear. I feel the familiar pang of suffocation as the walls of the toilet close in tightly around me. The sight of pink. Pink spotting is not good. Pink is never good as anyone will tell you. Brown blood is okay, it's old blood probably from an earlier implantation, but pink dear ones is the kiss of death in many a well documented failing IVF or pregnancy. Still the optimistic hope villain wears on and I coax myself out of the toilet with a story. "Maybe it's just some really new implantation spotting." I try telling myself. But another part knows too well that the guillotine is about to fall. I am doomed to seek refuge for the next few days in that place I've gotten to know a little too well this year. The very awful brainstorm is about to blow back in.

I climb into bed and Seb must have seen the look on my face, white and ashen I suppose or maybe wide eyed and resigned. I don't know which it was but it prompted him to ask if I was okay. I look away from his eyes because I know I am about to lie and say flippantly, "oh I'm just having some low back pain you know and it has me worried." lie. lie. lie. His reaction is a stunned silence, followed by an exasperated sigh. I suddenly feel relieved that I didn't tell him the truth about the blood. Besides there was that whole possibility of implantation spotting and why get him worried for nothing, right?

I lie there in the bed staring up at the ceiling unable to sleep. It is pouring rain outside and the winds were blowing hard making the timbers in the old attic creak. I study the sounds, mind on hyper speed. What am I going to do? Oh my god what am I going to do?

On Monday morning the bleeding is worse, a bright shiny red and frighteningly glaring from such a dizzying altitude of hope. The crash. The plunge. A floodgate of tears that will not stop. An overwhelming feeling that any contact with the outside world would burn like the touch of an open flame. I stay inside all day. Invisible razor blades continue to slash at bits of my soul each time I am forced to go in the toilet. The grief process is neatly turned on. Almost with a click of a dial and the buzz of a power current ground zero of a long and intricate healing process starts all by itself. I don't control it. It controls me, leading me through the steps.

For at least now it is truly as if someone has died in this house. Little S doesn't understand. He doesn't talk but he looks confused. Why is mommy crying? Why is mommy sitting under the table so long? Is this a game? The day wears on and each task seems insurmountable. Loading the dishwasher and washing the laundry are beyond comprehension. Making the bed seems futile and the bed and covers offer a comforting alternative to coping with the task of standing up and dealing with living. I can cover my head. I can disappear.

The day ends with a power outage. How fitting the outage of the telephone and internet is. The lights flicker off and on and it is as though the shortage of electricity ebbs and flows with my own inner tide of emotions. The internet and phone stay out of service and I have to admit that I am pleased to have an excuse not to answer the phone and act the part of someone mildly disappointed but coping just the same. I am not mildly disappointed. I am devastated. It's impossible to hide.

Later in the evening I call Seb and tell him finally, "It's over. I'm bleeding." Silence. He is so overwhelmed with shock that he says nothing for what seems a whole minute. "Are you still there...honey?" He does not answer. Can not. Finally a peep of a voice filters through. "Why were we able to have one baby and now this?" the angry words tumbling off his lips before he has time to think of the implication to my fragile well being. It seems he too has invested far too much hope in the cycle. He too was blindsided. He didn't see the negative results coming any more than I did. To him it was just a question of would it be twins? Maybe it would just be one child and we'd be a little disappointed. We always wanted twins. What infertile couple doesn't dream of that? The delicious bounty of two perfect children. It wasn't twins. It wasn't anything. He would have to accept that it was in fact nothing at all.

The bomb

My telephone and internet has been disconnected for four days and you can't imagine how difficult that has been. No internet. No Google. No nobody. It's been a very lonely four days.

Maybe it was a good thing to be cut off from the world. I think I needed the solitude. Today was the first day since Sunday that I left the house. Yes, as you can imagine the second IVF has failed. I never made it to the beta. I got the news Monday morning, special delivery from The Splotch Lady herself. It seems my name was on her *#@&! clipboard after all.

I still felt the need to write over the past four days and I kept a diary. It's pretty raw so I'm not sure if I will want to share it. Then again it probably would have all been posted here anyway. I'll consider putting it up over the next few days. It may help someone else to realize that they aren't so alone if they read about my feelings during this whole thing.

My mailbox was wonderfully full. Thanks you all for your concern and for being there. I really wish I could have read them earlier.

Whiskers on kittens

“Patience is bitter, but it's fruit is sweet.” --Jean Jacques Rousseau

I'm not very god at this waiting thing. The dreaded weekend is upon us and I am in a state of depression bordering on anxious hand wringing hope. I am still having the cramps, soreness, mood swings and vivid dream scenarios, last night's particularly disturbing because I dreamt that I was delivered The Splotch while going to pee. There it was all over my lucky IVF underwear.* Having vivid dreams made this all seem so real. I woke up severely depressed feeling like it had actually just happened. I recovered thinking "whew just a dream". I got out of bed to eat breakfast and shake it all off but the lingering feeling stayed, pulsing through my nervous system with disgusting vigor. After all the dream was so incredibly real it was difficult to shun.

I will not do an HPT. I'm not that eager to get all this over with. If you know anything about astrology I'll just say I'm a Pisces. We're the ones who like to avoid reality and live in a nice little cushy dream world of our own making. I think that about sums it up. At least without the HPT there is still hope and I can stay in my little fantasy land and imagine that it's working. If I do the test then it will be like last time. I can remember I had to sit there and reread the stupid box all weekend that says "99.9 and 9/10th's accuracy." Then when I scanned the instructions for the 1/10th percent inaccuracy, because you never know!! I read that it's only there because some people are really stupid and pee on the box or the receipt from the drugstore or some other I'm-a-nervous-wreck-teenager-and-I-think-I-hear-my-mom- coming thing. And then panic set in and I spent the entire weekend very miserable instead of wistfully hopeful. Julie Andrews turns Joan Crawford at the shake of stick if you will.

I asked the ladies on my TTC board to do a survey about getting pregnant with their IVF's since so many of them have fallen pregnant in the last year. I posed symptoms questions asking them if they kew they were pregant before the beta. They all said no. Only one person said they sort of "knew" beforehand. I felt better. I have almost forgotten what pregnant feels like but I definitley do not feel pregnant at all this time. I feel more unpregnant than ever. If anything I just feel slightly premenstral. I'm usually way more premenstral than this so even old reliable AF is off kilter. What a freaking mess this all is.

So meanwhile, anyone wanna go on the roof and pelt progesterone tablets at the neighbor's cats with me? I'm sure they'll eat them and we can see what kinds of symptoms they get. Come on it will be fun. I so need a diversion.

Okay the very least you can do is invent a diversion for me. What wacky things can I do to while the weekend away?

*Yes I actually have a set of six IVF underwear. They're practical too because the progesterone is harsh on rayon and silk undies and I take a lot of pride in my beautiful underwear collection!

Video diary - The horrors of a two week wait

Okay here I am with nothing but time on my hands. Maybe if I worked it would be better. Then again if you work how do you concentrate? I can barely concentrate on my morning toast right now.

Here's my latest video. That paper that I have in my mouth is stapled to the bulletin board by my computer. It's my prescription for next Thursday's beta test. I can't stop staring at it. It's making me insane.

The splotch lady and her clipboard

Okay so here I sit bloated like a beluga, crampy and grumped out to the max. My boobs are incredibly tender on the sides but we all know that if my ninety year old granny takes progesterone she'll have these same symptoms. Grandpa has been gone an awful long time so I doubt she'd declare herself pregnant with baby number eight.

Progesterone is an evil boyfriend-stealing bitch. I hate almost everything about it. Notice I said ALMOST.

The cramps are pretty strong and right now it feels like aunt flo is absentmindedly tapping a pen on a clipboard. I'm getting visions of what might happen in a few days:

"Next please!"

"me?" *pointing to myself and glancing around nervously*

"yes you! Who else? Are you stupid or what? You in the black sweater. Come on will you."

"But I wasn't supposed to...they said...you were supposed to...uh, be ...next week I have a be ..."

"...HEY...it says on my list you're next and that's what they pay me to do read your name and give you this giant red splotch. I am not here to babysit the masses lady. I have a lot of other women to visit and some of them actually LIKE me and welcome me into their homes. Some of them greet me with big bouquets of roses. One lady last week baked me chocolate chip cookies she was so happy I called her name."

"Pleeze lady. You are just a fat, ugly, smelly old skanky HO. And your mama before you was a fat, ugly, smelly, skanky Ho. And you can take your clipboard and your giant splotch and shove it up your big, old hairy... "

"Well I never! There is always a reason we have an X by certain names. I can certainly see why yours has one. One of the difficult ones!" *blows whistle* "Guard! Guaaard! It's one of those IVF ladies. She's being rude to me. I told you I will not even deal with these people anymore. Take her to the back room. Give her the splotch please!"

"Nooo...not the splotch!" *fighting the straight jacket*

I'm so on edge I feel like my eardrums are going to explode. That could be the lack of caffeine. It could be the lack of human contact. Where is everyone this week? Even the cyber world is absent.

Hopefully this will all end soon. My beta is on Thanksgiving day next week. I couldn't imagine a more fitting day one way or another. If it's a negative the irony of the whole thing will make even me laugh, reminding me that the universe does have a sense of humor. Otherwise if it's a positive I'll be able to produce a helluva "Chicken Soup for the IVFer's Soul" story now won't I.

Giddy enthusiastic infertiles and me before the blog

Okay I'm so incredibly bored and nightmarishly jittery that I can't stop fidgeting with search engines of every dang sort imaginable. I was so bored last night that I started digging through old posts from my old TTC board. If you're any kind of veteran infertile then visiting old web boards you used to post on like this is the equivalent of looking through a high school yearbook because all the posts are really dorky and you read remarks that say things like "OMG Misschrisc I hope that embie sticks like superglue! Good luck to you!! Baby dust to everyone!!" And then you know, the cycle turned out to be a bust and later you stopped asking for baby dust because you were pretty much sure it was lethal and should be labeled as a Class A drug.

I still keep in touch with some of the women from my TTC board and I think those that I do keep up with have crawled through enough mucky trenches with me that I'm pretty sure they wouldn't wish any baby dust on me or anyone else for that matter. I'm pretty sure in their early days they like me were naieve and seemed confident that perfect "embies" came along each cycle, that we all ovulated on day 14 and that baby dust should be bottled and sold in Walmart because it was just so freaking wonderful. It's refreshing to have moved beyond all of that. Thank god for that reality check.

In digging around I found this old post which I found rather funny. I wrote this in January 2004 a few days before my first ever positive beta. A positive beta that was realized after an awful lot of muck: two years of natural ttc, two clomid cycles, two injectable cycles, five IUI's and one bittersweet cancelled IVF. Five years of trying to make a baby using all the ammunition available. That positive beta rocked my world! (and for the record he's still rocking it as we speak).

Pay close attention to theory number two because that's exactly what happened, little devil.

****

"I went to pee last night and lo and behold there was a glob of cm with a tinge of pink streak through it. My bathroom microscope may not have been adjusted to the right setting so I'm not really so sure about the grade levels...but, it was like yellowish ewcm. This is weird. I mean cm I have in ALL forms and if you've ever dealt with progesteron suppositories you'll be shaking your head along with me. We're talking concrete underwear at the end of the day people! (sorry for the enthusiasm) But progesterone leaves a "certain" trail I've come to affectionately know and this was not that. I have no idea WHATS going on. I just have three warped theories. Here goes:

Theory 1: AF is knockin' on my door with her basket full of goodies. Pushy broad that she is she is knocking at the WRONG time and is very uninvited. She has lost her key (my locksmith named Progesterone--good guy) and she's leaving her calling card and this lovely glob of ewcm as a gift because she knows I always have liked finding that. How sweet of her. I'm doomed.

Theory 2: The little tyke is implanting really late. He's going to be quite a handful when he gets here and he's showing that stubborn side now. "Hey...you WERE always late mister and don't give me that attitude!! Wipe that smirk off your face. This is your mother talking!"" He's going to cause me to have a really low beta which will just give me more even stress. Kids...golly the troubles and worries they cause us little devils!

Theory 3: The stress from the 2ww has caused a large HOLE to form in my stomach which is currently eating through my uterus in its second stage. The blood is slowly trickling and I will die just five minutes before my beta on Thursday. "How tragic!" they'll say "...she was pregnant with twins.." DH will surely get defensive and say "I told her not to stress but she didn't listen!"

And then there's the Conspiracy Theory where the Taliban came in and tampered with my toilet paper but I don't want you all to think I'm paranoid or anything. Pessimist that I am I'm sticking with theory one. Tragic Dissapointment has become very comfortable in my old age."

Two weeks of hope...why me?

I awoke this morning with cramps. They were what you might call mild, very mild in fact, almost barely not even there. Maybe even so slight that you might not even call them cramps, but more like heaviness. So there I have noted it. I have taken it down in the notepad and submitted it for consideration. The committee is adding it to their pile of information which they amass during this type of thing. You know, the little mental committee that discusses these things by conference calls thrice daily and then abruptly convenes near at the end of the two weeks for the massive summit, that massive summit where The Great IF gets decided.

Meanwhile I wait *drumming fingers*

I have polished all of my copper pots in my kitchen. Usually I just toss them in the dishwasher once a month to get them relatively splotch free, a lazy girls way of taking care of a pretty little set of pots, but yesterday I polished them with gusto using a product that's been sitting in the basement for a few years. While I was down there I grabbed our enormous box of photographs, an overwhelming visual melange of my previous life and Seb's, intertwined in a massive array of ski photos, French weddings and Florida sunsets. I decided that it was the perfect week to tackle this little organizing project seeing as these next few weeks will leave me with so much head scratching and pondering. In one of the first batch of photos were pictures of Seb's ex girlfriend, Kay and I imagined how his life may have been different, or mine had he stayed with her. Well actually I imagine she would have driven him to mental institution and I have probably singlehandedly rescued him from that judicious fate, but that maybe they would have had a few kids along the way, the easy way, and he would have found that part of life so much simpler. You can't help but wonder these things when faced with the ex-files.

Okay I'm rambling. Bear with me.

I had a really strange water dream last night, or maybe it was just what my mom calls pee dreams. I just remember wading through these murky, flood waters to get to this parking garage where I was supposed to meet the semi famous, amateur video maker Brookers. The strange part was at some point I reached under my long skirt and pulled out from between my legs a jar with two babies stuffed inside. I said to myself "damn it's probably too early to have pulled these out because they're still processing." They looked quite silent and still. I tried to put them back but I couldn't figure out how. I can remember wondering if there was a third baby in a jar up there somewhere and what state it was in. It was such a bizarre and vivid dream and I have no idea why two babies were in one jar and the other baby was presumably in another jar all alone. I also couldn't figure why they appeared to be near full term babies and not embryos. I have no insight into what it could mean but I think fertility dreams are always very telling. I welcome any armchair analysis you might want to add to it.

I'm going to get back to my photo organizing, a fun little project to do with the help of a toddler. He is ready and willing to aid in any way he can, black permanent marker poised. I'm going to let him file all the photos of "daddy and the ex." I'm sure he'll be very helpful.

Video diary - The egg retreival

Well as you can see I'm back from the egg retreival and the egg transfer. I had lots of things to talk about so I threw it all together in a video. This video thing is just too easy. I think I'm inclined to abuse it.

I'll be back on the writing bandwagon for a while here. I think the writing helps me think things through a little better.

Meanwhile for all those who were curious about how things went...enjoy.

Video diary - Back from egg retreival

Well as you can see I'm back from the egg retreival and the egg transfer. I had lots of things to talk about so I threw it all together in a video. This video thing is just too easy. I think I'm inclined to abuse it.

I'll be back on the writing bandwagon for a while here. I think the writing helps me think things through a little better. The videos are fun to make and edit but they don't clear my head out in the same way that forming the ideas in my head and then putting them on a page does. Isn't that funny?

Meanwhile for all those who were curious about how things went, enjoy my telling of all the gory details.

Video diary - panic attack!

Boy oh boy was yesterday stressful. I hate the idea that the entire hospital shuts down on the weekends and staff is only reachable by cell phones. Cell phones are completely unreliable pieces of crap, ask me because I know. Having that as your only liaison between certain ovulation and the next step is scary. Being in that position when you're choosing between croissants and pain-au-chocolat at the bakery is one thing "honey, which do you want? The raisin bread looks good too...", but when it comes to creating my potential children I'd really rather have something more reliable to depend on like say... real people standing right in front of me and real secretaries manning a huge switchboard!!

I'll explain it all in my little video. It was a quick one made as I just got out of bed, which is why my voice is so odd and congested. Seb happened to mention that maybe I should put some makeup on before I do videos I put out for the world to see, but I told him that if I get rich one day I might hire an anchorwoman with bobbed hair and a Nancy Reagan suit to do all my videos for me. I never was very good on the other side of the camera. It's much more fun to be in the editing room if you ask me.

Oh dear why does it have to be on a weekend?

So I kinda sorta have a retreival date on Wednesday but of course nothing is sure yet because there is still the dreaded weekend to get through and weekends in France are pretty much the time when it might be best to commit murder or rob a person at gunpoint or do whatever crime you have to get off your chest because it's fairly certain that even if the police are working, they're most likely standing around a coffee machine making fun of their boss or trading crass jokes about women in short skirts. So yeah, the weekend.

The last few scans in IVF are the most important ones and the last scan, the big deciding scan is the MOST important. If any of the information is screwed up, the dosage not regulated well, a dose is missed or any other type of miscommunication occurs, the IVF patient can quickly ovulate and the whole cycle will be shot to hell. So, my last scan is Saturday. Yeah, the weekend!

Yesterday when I talked to the nurse she explained to me what I needed to do to get throught the weekend and gave me the cell phone number of the on call doctor at the hospital who will be my liasion after my all-important Saturday scan. The secretary and nurses are not there on Saturday and I assume most of the doctors are gone too so after I see Dr. Stonehenge Saturday morning and he e-mails my result to the hospital I am to hear from this on call doctor before six. If by around six he doesn't call then I'm to call him directly on his cell phone and scream somthing like "HEY, where the @¤%! F*CK ARE you asshole...it's one damned minute past SIX ALREADY!!" because I can't stop picturing him sitting in a café at six drinking a glass of beaujolais and staring annoyingly at his ringing phone, trying to decide whether he should pick it up or not..."no eet will be jeest zee woman ahmereecan which eez very annoying wiss her accent..ouf!"

So yeah, the weekend.

It's looking like I'll have my next scan tomorrow, which is Saturday and then perhaps continue the drugs through Sunday, and then trigger the eggs to release late Monday. This means I will have my retrieval in Lyon on Wednesday if all goes well.

I'm going to be so angry though if these beautiful eggs are wasted on the French penchant for the 36 hour work week. I have worked too hard to get here only to have it lost in some weakly constructed chinese telephone labyrinth, and heads will roll right up to Chirac's oversized feet if this cycle fails because of that.

***

Okay yeah, so that's what a Gonal-F rant sounds like. You just don't want to mess with me right now. I am a volcano of destruction. Watch out weekend shift!

Video diary - "The latest scan"

I talk about the results of my latest scan.

Big scan day

Tomorrow I get another scan and bloodwork. This is the big scan though which will most likely tell me whether or not I stay on the stims, whether I trigger soon, or as in the case of an old cycle from three years ago whether I already ovulated and all is gloom and doom. I don't think I'll be sleeping very well tonight. I want to get tomorrow over with.

I hate the last weeks of IVF treatment. It's a lot of melodrama and it's really hard to handle melodrama when you're all hopped up on hormones and without caffeine or sugar.

I really do need a good night's sleep though otherwise I'll blame that if this cycle is a bust.