TWW

It feels like you never know how desperately you want a baby/a family until you are staring the 'TWW' in the face. Systematically counting down each 'DPO' and obsessively ticking off the symptom checklist.

Today I am 8dpo on my first month 'TTC'. My wife has been trying for the past 8 months and this month we decided to both give it a try. We are using a known donor and doing home insemination and due to some fuck up in the earths finely tuned balance, we were both ovulating around the same couple of days (fucked up because it will also mean we are pre menstrual at the same time- which in turn breeds all sorts of hormonal crazy in our relationship, on the occassion that our cycles choose to merge together...only to diverge quite soon after when it realises that rather than a biological wonder, it is a biological hazard.

So far this delightful TWW I am experiencing

Nausea
Extreme hunger
frequent urination
indigestion
cramps
Gas
Food aversions
Night time waking
and a google obsession (not a new thing however)

and guess what.....I am quite probably going to start bleeding over the next few days and it will be back to square one.

The part of me that ebays cute baby clothes remains vaguely optimistic every month and then becomes rapidly depressed once 'AF' shows up...for it to die away and become optimistic once more when them two dark lines come up on the 'OPK'

But for now I am going to sit here and eat my victoria sponge (I AM CRAVING IT), because hey ho. I am either pregnant or pre-menstrual so it is justified.

H x

Sperm hunt

Ok so alot has changed since I last blogged.

We cancelled the May wedding and are now getting married in exactly 46 days!! We have decided to just do it with 10 immediate family members at a registry office and then head to hotel/spa for the weekend. This saves on the hassle of planning a big wedding and the expense of it all. I just want T to be my wife and we can still have everything we wanted, just with less guests which is fine by us, as we were not very keen on all the attention anyway. Maybe when they legalize gay marriage we will be in a different position and go for a bigger celebration.

One of the other big motivations in our change in wedding plans is that we have decided we want to start a family sooner rather than later and if we got married in May then that would be 6 months less of trying as for legal security we want to be in a civil partnership prior to trying.

We were initially going to go to a clinic and do egg sharing, but after discussing it we have decided that we are going to find a Known donor and do artificial insemination at home for a few months and hopefully it will be successful and it will be awesome, but if it isn't successful then we will have at least given it a go and in the meantime saved up enough money to pay off pesky overdrafts from our student days and have enough to pay for egg sharing if it comes down to that.

We have found two potential donors that we really like the sound of so far and we have arranged dates to meet them for a coffee. We are meeting one guy on Monday and he is currently the favorite (from emails and such like) so we are hoping we click with him. We have made it quite clear that we don't want the donor to have a role in the childs life aside from perhaps contact when the child turns 18, as we want to be the parents and we don't want a third party. We hope that we will be enough for our children and when they grow up they don't resent our decisions to not have the donor involved.We want our children to know where they came from but we don't want them involved in raising them.

Trying to conceive (TTC)is actually so exciting, overwhelming and slightly depressing when you consider your own lack of sperm and the success rates etc. We are currently in the midst of charting ovulation. T has to do her temperature every morning and record it on the chart and we also keep an eye on such delightful things as cervical mucous and cervix positioning. It is a minefield of amazingness really- last month you could see where T's temperature dipped and when her cervical mucous changed and it is really cool in a gross way. Perhaps the fact I am a midwife makes me more fascinated and less squeamish, but either way!

Hopefully by the end of January we will have little swimmers swimming towards the egg

Fingers crossed

xxxx

The Three B's

This week has been an excellent week. Firstly we decided that we are going to start trying for a baby next year as soon as we have got married and perhaps start the necessary testing beforehand in April as we are planning to do egg sharing ivf, if T is accepted on to the program. If not, financially we will have to try IUI instead. T is definitely hopefully going to carry the first baby, as she is 3 years older. I am happy to wait my turn :) It is very exciting. Life is too short and I want as much time with our children as possible, as working in a hospice has really showed me how you never know what is round the corner and how family are the thing that matters most in this life and are the one thing that are with us until the end of time. Not how many bedrooms our house has. I shared a bedroom with either my sister and at times my brother and sister until I was 11 and I had the best childhood ever. We also lived in a caravan in my grandparents backyard until I was 7. We will be living in a lovely 2 bed by the time our baby is old enough to care anyway. For the first year until we leave London and try for baby number 2, he can bunk up in our room :D

We also have booked our honeymoon, which is awesome as we have spent weeks trying to figure out where to go and how much money to spend etc. Our ideas varied from an all inclusive 2 weeks in mexico to a caravan in Cornwall. We really want to keep costs down so we can afford the IVF! In the end we have opted for a middle ground and are hiring a villa on the coast in Sardinia and hiring a car to drive around the Island. It looks gorgeous. The beaches are white and the sea is crystal clear. It is costing us £950 for the villa, flights and hire car. Pretty reasonable really as it has a jacuzzi overlooking the sea and everything and it is also private so we will be able to relax better.

Going for a week also means we can fit in going to the fertility clinic and a couple of nights in Paris in to our 2 weeks annual leave. We are not taking more time off to allow for baby making days off. While we would love to get pregnant on our first go, we are being realistic and anticipating more of a journey.

The three b's have also thus commenced this week. BRIDAL. BEACH. BABY diet! We are on a definite health kick now so that we are in optimum shape to give ourselves the best chance. We have swapped cake for fruit and the sofa for long walks. We r also gonna start playing tennis and swimming :) I am pretty sure cake will worm itself in occasionally, but so long as we keep focused then I am sure we will get there. Damn BMI charts. We went on a lovely 4 mile round trip walk into Greenwich last night and rewarded ourselves with a starbucks when we got there :) It is well worth the walk for both the coffee and the amazing view of Canary Wharf

Lastly I am starting my new job on Monday. This is quite terrifying but also very exciting. Gone are my student days. I am so glad to be in the adult world now even if I lose my student discount :)

I AM GONNA BE A TOTAL BREAD WINNER

This is what I am looking at whenever I want chocolate (mmmm)

I can't wait x x x

The other side.

I am not really one to discuss my feelings, or show them, but H managed to crash through all my defences and actually open up about my feelings and my future plans. She has been nothing but wholeheartedly supportive in every decision I have made and I'm incredibly grateful to have her in my life.

Meeting her was actually the best decision ever. We met briefly on a dating website, I say brief, it was within 24 hours and we had already decided to meet in person. I guess something made us gravitate towards each other constantly. And now I can't really imagine ever being apart. 

I may not be the the typical girl in planning weddings but i am so excited about the day I get to call her my wife. Scary, exciting, can't actually wait. 
   
There are so many things that I want for our life, and its amazing how I've found someone who feels the same. <3 
  
T
  

Shitty looking blog

T thinks our blog looks lame. How dare she. I spent a good 5 minutes on the template. She is a techno geek so is going to revamp it at some point. I look forwards to seeing the pimping. I am not sure if I lack the skill or the arsedness. Probably both. I am sure I could master the art though. I am soooo excited that it is October. I love Autumn. I love the colours. I love walking along the Thames with coats and gloves with coffee. I love Halloween, bonfire day and awaiting December so we can put up decorations and wander around Christmas markets and winter wonderland at Hyde park. I also can't wait to see the Snowman at the theatre and go to the carol service at St Paul. Bring on Autumn and Winter. I also love cuddling up on the sofa with a good book and hearty food. Mmmmm.

Sperm Envy

I WISH I HAD SPERM. Though T told me that if I did they would be amazing sperm. Some consolation to my inept reproductive system. Who decided that two eggs don't make a baby are FOOLS. It is going to cost us thousands to conceive in some lab. This thought bums me out sometimes. But our lab rat is going be beautiful someday.

Dresses...TWO OF THEM

Ok so I shouldn't blog while in either a rush or half way through a 12.5 hour night shift. Right now I am starving and watching Nigela which also isn't a good combo. Our Iceland value fish fingers are in the oven though.... (currently awaiting pay day). Apologies for any typos as currently using my touch screen mobile and it is prone to ridiculous auto corrects. I keep having dreams about wedding dresses. The last one was the week before the wedding and neither me or T had found a dress. The dream ended with me finding one at a charity shop in Hogwarts. I have spent months occassionally browsing wedding dress websites and I have yet to find my oneeee. It is bloody hard trying to find dresses. We went through a phase of thinking we will wear contrasting coloured dresses but then we tried an ivory dress on (in Debenhams cos we were not brave enough to head in to pretentious intimidating looking bridal shops and I don't want to fall in love with some trillion pound number) and yes we both really actually suited ivory and while I am anxious about 2 ivory dresses screaming lesbians and looking daft (irrational as I am out and proud and have seen lots of beautiful lesbian wedding photos that look beautiful with both brides in ivory) and I think T would love nothing better than attracting as little attention as possible, we have decided to screw all our fears and just look like brides :D We are going for either second hand dresses or at least I am. T has already found one she wants and it is pretty reasonably priced brand new. She knows exactly what style she wants though (50s tea dress swing style). I on other hand change my mind constantly. We are going to see each others dresses on hanger but not on. I just know that T is going to look beautiful no matter what she wears x