Messing with my head...

In a follow-up to yesterday's pitiful post, I'm now starting to feel less and less guilty about forgetting my Bloke's birthday, as I think he is up to something...

I'm almost 100% sure that he is pretending to have told me stuff, then pretending I have forgotten, just to get him out of trouble when he has forgotten to tell me something (that's a lot of pretending and forgetting)...

For example, yesterday afternoon via email:

Him: Remember that I'm out bowling tonight with people from work...
Me: It's not called remembering if you never told me in the 1st place...
Him: I definitely told you...
Me: No you didn't...
Him: I did - maybe not that it was bowling but definitely that I was out...

Don't worry - there was no antagonism in this exchange. I'm quite happy to have an evening of eating stuff for dinner that my Bloke doesn't like and watching rubbish TV, plus not having the AC set at 'frost' level (I seem to be over the overheating meltdowns that plagued my early pregnancy).

But it bothers me that I have might have completely forgotten yet another thing... still thinking he's messing with my head....

Worst pregnancy brain (and worst wife) ever

So, if forgetting my Bloke's birthday yesterday wasn't bad enough, I managed to forget despite:

• hearing the doorbell ring early (I was still asleep) & getting up in the morning to find a bottle of wine on the table (from my husband's driver) - then proceeding to ask my Bloke over email who woke me up ringing the bell and why is there a bottle of wine in the living room?
• scrolling past my phone calendar reminder of his birthday to check where I was meeting a new friend later that day...
• talking to him on the phone for 15 minutes and still not remembering...

I finally remembered at lunchtime and sent him a message.  

In my defence, my Bloke doesn't like to celebrate his birthday - he thinks greeting cards are a waste of money and paper (after 10 years together he has gradually come round to getting me a card, most years). We have also been in the midst of apartment/hospital/furniture-hunting chaos and my brain was fully occupied with finding us somewhere to live.

OK, there's really no excuse - he knew he probably wasn't getting a gift (he doesn't mind about this usually) but might have expected a 'Happy Birthday' at some point... what can I say? I'm the worst wife ever :(

A week of firsts

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the 'firsts' for the week was getting offered a seat on the metro due to my bump (I am hoping it was the bump and not the general look of exhaustion on my face that prompted this act of charity)...

The exhaustion was due to me being on my way back from my first mother & baby fair which had been very handily arranged for my 2nd week in Korea, so I could start getting to grips with the baby stores and products available here and how much they all cost. The kind Korean people seemed to conspire to let me completely buck the system and jump the massive queue to get in the fair immediately and without paying... this wasn't intentional on my part - it just seemed that the people I asked at the gates didn't speak enough English to explain that I should join the scarily long registration queues and let me walk right in!

I went on a weekday to try and avoid the chaos that I'd heard about, but it was still pretty frantic in there - where did all these hugely pregnant women and mothers carrying babies and toddlers in slings get the energy to cover 2 football field-sized halls? Though, to be fair, I too felt a surge of energy from being there - maybe that's a little investigated side-effect of pregnancy hormones.... the ability to shop for baby-related goods for hours, yet barely have enough energy to get off the sofa to wash the dishes!

I ended up wandering round (for wandering, read pushing my way past thousands of pushchairs, baby bumps and sling-suspended youngsters) for about 4 hours. And my overall impression of the baby-product market in Korea?
Pretty much everything you could want and might find back home is available there (unlike in China) including organic baby clothes, cloth nappies and pushchairs & car seats galore.
Pretty much everything is scarily expensive compared to back home!

I already knew from China that this would probably be the case and had already planned to buy a pushchair in the UK on my next visit home and get my Bloke to bring it back here on his next trip - that seems to be the big ticket item that we could save most money on in this way.  But the fair made me realise how much else there is to buy that I haven't even thought about yet and how little I know about where to get all this stuff! We're also going to have to bite the bullet over the cost because there's no way to bring back everything we need from the UK in one trip and shipping costs would probably make it pointless.

But, to make a start, I experienced another 'first' and bought my first item for baby. I discovered a couple of English guys on a stand and one of them was the CEO of a British sling company - it was so nice to have a chat with someone from home and, as a sling was high on my list of essentials for our newborn, I allowed myself to get talked into buying one. Slings and carriers are hugely popular here - I don't really know how much they're used back home, but I was amazed by how many parents use them here.  I also had some fixed ideas about what I wanted and didn't want from talking to friends in China about theirs... the one I bought seemed to tick all the boxes and was only a bit more expensive here than in the UK, so I went for it.

I also bought some maternity clothes from a US company that had a stand there which was surprisingly affordable... I fell in love with a pair of maternity jeans (who knew that was possible!) and also with the reflection of myself in the changing room mirror wearing a 7 month baby bump cushion to try them on :)

Today will be another 'first' - my Bloke and I will take our first trip to department stores to check out baby products 'in the flesh' as opposed to my hours of online browsing. I am preparing myself for:

• having to stop my Bloke wandering off to other departments at every opportunity
• my Bloke passing out when he realises I haven't been exaggerating about how much everything costs
• my Bloke explaining to me (for the 10th time) how he doesn't see the cost-benefit rationale in paying hundreds of pounds for something that will only get used for a finite and fairly short amount of time
• possibly me experiencing another round of my newest pregnancy symptom - bursting into tears at the slightest provocation and then not being able to stop snivelling for about 2 hours

But I'll let you know which of these occurred another day!

Where to begin? A new country, perhaps?!

It's been a while since my last post so I thought I'd better  stop being so lazy and reassure a few of you who've been asking that I'm still here and all is fine :)

And 'here' is now South Korea! My Bloke and I have been here a couple of weeks and it's gone really quickly and, so far, really smoothly. The move seems to have helped me relax as far as this pregnancy goes - it seems to have been the new start that I needed, which is rather counter-intuitive when moving house (let alone country) is supposed to be one of the most stressful life events, along with bereavement and divorce. But then, I don't think fertility treatment has it's rightful place on that list yet, and to me an international move seems like childs-play compared to that!

So, this new state of calm, along with my increasingly large belly is helping me to accept that this pregnancy is real and (still hopefully, but in all likelihood) will end with a baby, our baby. Talking of my belly, it is getting more and more obvious that I'm pregnant rather than chubby, depending on what outfit I wear - I'm currently favouring maternity pants and tops that seem to hug my belly and make it more obvious... after waiting so long for this bump, I am milking it for all it's worth quite shamelessly :).

One 'first' this week (there were a few) was getting offered a seat on the metro for the first time. The people here are generally very polite and good about standing up to let older people, pregnant women and mothers carrying children sit down... this time, an older lady stopped a younger girl sitting in a vacant seat on a packed train to allow me to sit down - my saviour!

Because the only downside of the my current state of health is my ongoing back/hip problems. The pain that started at 12 weeks has continued and is really no better, plus I now have a line of hard lumps/nodules along the sides of my back and round to my hips. The whole thing is really slowing me down in my exploration of my new home - walking for 15 minutes leaves me sore and standing for 30 minutes leaves me feeling faint and in need of a lie down. I'm also still struggling with sleep because turning over is painful unless I lift my butt and try not to let my hips touch the bed. An assortment of pillows is helping, but is not ideal. I saw a physio before leaving China and he gave me some strengthening exercises and talked a lot about how the muscles compensate for any instability in the pelvis caused by ligament loosening/stretching, which I'm more prone to because I have hypermobile joints. But he also said there is no sign of instability in my joints at the moment... I never really felt that I got a solid diagnosis but I only saw him twice before moving, so figured I'd get a more definitive answer here... once I work out which kind of Doctor I need to see - a physio, chiropractor or acupuncturist?.... but that's a post for another day!

But, to end on a positive note, all is generally great. I gave in and bought a fetal doppler and enjoy listening to the little one's heartbeat every few days or so (I have managed to avoid obsession so far!). He seems to be wriggling around a lot so sometimes it's harder to find than others, but hopefully that means I might start to feel some of those wriggles and kicks soon :)

Thanks to those that were asking after me and sorry for my absence in commenting on your blogs... I will make more effort to keep up to date from now on (though there might be another lull when we move into our new home until I get internet connected and/or work out how to change my new phone into English and update from there!). xx

Getting ready for the move...

I realise it's been a pretty long time since I've posted. I guess this is for a number of reasons, but none of them really conscious decisions. Perhaps because I can only access Blogger on our PC in our office and not on my laptop (due to the censorship in China - need special software to access blocked sites) and have been too lazy/tired/stiff to go and sit on an uncomfortable office chair rather than the sofa! Perhaps because I've been trying to stay out of my own head a bit and blogging doesn't help me with that. Perhaps because of the spate of bad news on blogs I follow recently - I've still been reading them, but my own craziness seems so unimportant and inane in comparison.

So what has been happening in my life over the last few weeks?

• Got our screening test results back at about 12 and a half weeks and they were fine :)  Not amazingly low, but not at all bad for my age (34). This was the milestone at which we'd agreed that we would start to tell more people (including most of our family)...
• Skip to freak out by me brought on by aches and twinges in my back, hips, belly and occasionally legs. I couldn't get the thought out of my mind that something might have gone wrong between the scan at 11+2 and the 13 week point when we were supposed to start telling people.
• Jump to me calling my hospital and getting an 'emergency' appointment with my temporary Ob/Gyn (she deserves a whole post to herself.... and not in a good way). Everything was fine - got a quick, extra scan and all looking good :)  Growing pains in my belly eased off and I relaxed a bit.
• Still no resolution to the pain in my back/hips - I don't know the name for this area, but it's those muscles at the bottom of your back/top of your butt. If you've been through IVF, it's the muscles where you have the IM progesterone shots! The soreness had eased off after stopping injections at 10 weeks. A week later, my Bloke and I had sex (1st time since egg collection!) and the next day these muscles were really sore. I presumed I'd used some underworked muscles but, 2 weeks later, the discomfort is getting worse. I can't lie on my back, the whole area is sore to the touch and even sitting down is uncomfortable. Have finally managed to get an appointment with a physio tomorrow, so hoping I'll get some answers then.
• My Bloke went back to the UK for work (he's still there) and told his parents and siblings our good news. He randomly decided to tell his folks we're having a boy!! Much excitement because there are currently no boys to carry on the family name at the moment! Seriously, Men!
• Told my Big Sis and Bruv - managed to stay calm at the odd jibe/insensitive comment from my sister, but have saved up some very honest responses that I can blame on hormones for next time!
• On Sunday, I have a leaving lunch with about 20 friends.. still deciding whether to tell them about our pregnancy...
• On Monday, our movers are in and we leave our house... it can't come a minute too soon because I am so sick of sweating all day with our lack of aircon (long story cut short - rats in the central air vents last winter, so I'm refusing to turn on the aircon).
• Next Saturday, fly to Seoul!

That wasn't as brief as I'd planned! All in all, I'm doing fine. I am really trying very hard not to obsess about this pregnancy and relax and enjoy it. I know I'm not quite there, because I know my fear of telling more people is based on the fear that something will go wrong and I'll have to tell loads of people the bad news. I do know how unlikely that is now. Maybe my reluctance is due to a little niggly feeling that I might be dreaming this whole thing and people will just laugh when I tell them I'm pregnant! Oh, how I wish I had a huge baby bump already (still no sign of it - just fat and bloating still)...

Time to go before I waffle any more. I'll be off the blogosphere for a week or so between packing up our PC and getting to Seoul and the land of uncensored internet :)  Will catch up with you all from our new home!!

Fab scan :)

Today was the big day for our (early) 12 week scan. The focus of my nerves in the last few weeks has been gradually changing. After the last scan, my thoughts turned to the screening tests and all my worry-energy went on those and the possible outcomes. But as the days have gone by and the scan date approached, that same old concern reared it's head again... 'please, please, let the baby have a heartbeat - let the little one be there and be growing'.  I think I've done pretty well keeping that worry in perspective - well, if refusing to read any potentially negative outcome posts on my usual birth club forum counts as keeping things in perspective. I guess my reasoning for that is that I know what can go wrong - at this point, I need to remember how likely it is that things will go right.

Anyway, today all did go right! Our little one has certainly grown in 3 weeks :) He/she was mostly lying on his back chilling out, but waved his arms and legs and wriggled around from side to side a bit. He* also seemed to have an attack of the hiccups at one point (might have to Google if that's possible...)! We could see fingers and toes and the baby's profile - both my Bloke and I have larger than average noses, so we had a bit of a laugh about the size of his already :)

He's measuring a couple of days ahead and had a heart rate of 171 bpm! Wow, that's fast! We got to hear the heartbeat briefly which made me cry again - there's something about that sound that makes it so real for me :)

The NT measurement came in low which was reassuring. We have to wait 2 weeks now for the blood results - after being told it would take 1 week, that's a bit annoying and means the results might not come back before my Bloke goes to the UK. But there's nothing we can do about that, so I'm trying to relax.

And that's the weird thing, isn't it? If all goes smoothly, we won't have another scan for 9 weeks... That's a long time with no 'evidence' that baby is doing well. I guess a growing belly and then feeling movement are the next signs - can't wait for those to appear!

*You may have noticed that baby is usually referred to as a boy. No real reason for this, other than the fact that my good friend predicted that our IVF would be successful and that we would have a boy back in the midst of my cycle. Actually, the ultrasound tech said she thought she could see something between the little one's legs today when I asked about gender, but I know it's too early to tell :)

A forgotten gift...

The other day at the maternity/babywear store, I realised that, despite my refusal to buy any maternity clothes or baby stuff until the 2nd trimester, I already have my first baby gift awaiting our little one. My friend pointed out a toy in the store and said 'You have to have one of these' and I realised she was indicating Sophie the giraffe. At this point, I remembered that we already have a special Sophie awaiting the arrival of our little one.

This gift has been waiting patiently for a while now. It was bought by a friend who knows about our struggles and our treatment. This friend has been through so much more than I have or hope I ever will, but her story is not mine to tell -  I will just say that, at the age of 42 she conceived naturally and now has a beautiful 1 year old baby girl, after being told at the age of 17 that she would never have her own child. She bought a twin pack of Sophies when she was replacing her daughter's much-loved one that had been lost. She told me that the 2nd one was for me and my baby, whenever he/she arrived.

At the time, I didn't know how to feel. Part of me was almost arrogant, taking a 'What does she know?' approach - how can she know that we will ever have the miracle that she was granted? Another part of me was so grateful - grateful that someone had the hope and faith that I was struggling to get hold of and generally failing to hang on to. I think that gift was the moment when I genuinely did start to hope and to believe that this could happen for us. There's no rationality or logic in hope and her faith helped me make the change from 'Why is this IF happening to me?' to 'Why shouldn't I be one of the 'lucky' ones?'  (Strange how 'lucky' now involves success after years of tests and several rounds of treatment!).

My friend doesn't 'officially' know our good news yet, though she has a pretty good idea from a couple of clues here and there. I'm looking forward to being able to tell her in a couple of weeks and to accepting my first baby gift with love and gratitude.