Sorry, but being a mother is not the most important job in the world….

November 12, 2015November 13, 20155 Comments

Ha! Got you thinking there with that provocative statement….well it certainly got me thinking when I read this opinion article from the Guardian. Catherine Deveny tells us that we should drop the slogan “Being a mother is the toughest job on the earth”.

Well Catherine, apparently you would be going against the opinion of 92% of mothers. According to a survey by ‘Parents Magazine’, 92% of mothers agree that being a mother is the toughest job on earth. The other 8% must be rocket scientists and coalminers (well at least according to @JillFilipovic.) And don’t forget the journalists at The Guardian.

Why does Catherine tell us we should quit the slogan? Because she believes it encourages mothers to stay socially and financially hobbled, it alienates fathers and discourages other significant relationships between children and adults. Hmmmm, I’d never thought of it like that before.

When you really think about it, she is right. In her article she explores what a mother actually is in this context, and argues that the slogan delegitimises the relationship fathers, friends, grandparents, and carers have with children. And what about those single dads out there?

“If being a mother were a job there’d be a selection process, pay, holidays, a superior to report to, performance assessments, Friday drinks, and you could resign from your job and get another one because you didn’t like the people you were working with. It’s not a vocation either – being a mother is a relationship.”

(That’s my favourite part of the argument!)

But is she getting a bit het up about it all? It’s just a saying, a phrase. Surely it doesn’t cause any harm? Who actually cares?

Well, when you evaluate it at deeper level it contributes to building up the idea that nothing a woman can achieve in life matters more than having babies.

My dear Friends, I am not saying that being a mother (in whatever guise) or even going through motherhood, isn’t tough, it is. I have seen it and it isn’t pretty. I’m looking forward to the challenge AND reward of being a mother someday. But I’m not going to kill myself over this infertility, I’m not going to dig myself into a hole of physical pain and emotional suffering. At some point in the future we may have to make a choice of being childless and I don’t want to feel like I have failed. Chris said this to me in the car yesterday after my HSG test. “It’s not giving up, it’s not failure – it’s a decision”. This slogan “Being a mother is the most important job in the world” will make me feel like I failed and will perpetuate a hole of sadness and depression in me, and I don’t want that. And I also don’t want that for anyone of my friends and family, child-free, now and in the future (or anyone else in the world for a matter of fact). My feelings are pretty much in alignment with Catherine…

“If you are using motherhood to assert that you care more about humanity than the next person, if you’re using it as a shorthand to imply that you are a more compassionate and hard-working person than the women and men standing around you, then feel free to get over yourself.”

The sugar monster

November 10, 2015November 10, 201513 Comments

Hello, my name is Dani and I am a sugar addict. Phew. Glad I got that out into the open now :-s

After reading ‘It starts with the egg’ by Rebecca Fett I decided to give up sugar about 2 months prior our 1^st IVF cycle.

Actually what I really gave up was simple/refined carbohydrates. The science behind it all is rather compelling so I thought I’d give it a go. It turns out that women who follow a diet of low-glycemic/slow carbohydrates have a much lower rate of ovulatory infertility. Research shows that high blood sugar and insulin levels significantly decrease egg quality. This in turn reduces the proportion of embryos that can successfully implant in the uterus, reduces IVF success rates, and increases the risk of early pregnancy loss. As we have no clue what causes my infertility, I thought it has got to be worth a shot.

Well fat lot of good that did me! Although, as it was my first time doing both the diet and the IVF, it is difficult to know what would have happened had I not followed the diet. I mean, it was the first time I ever saw two pink lines, so there was definitely something that helped!! Whether it was the IVF or the diet we will never really know. I’m not willing to experiment.

Chris helped me and we made some general food choice changes. We swapped out white rice and pasta with the brown and black stuff. We bought quinoa, lentils and whole wheat cous-cous….all slow release carbohydrates. Our portions also became smaller because we got fuller quicker. I bought a bread machine and we made our own whole wheat breads. We got rid of the chocolate, cookies and other bads and replaced them with nuts, fruits and plain yoghurt.

After the news of our unviable pregnancy the comfort food came out and the diet went out of the window. At first, everything was too sweet and I couldn’t eat much of it! But it soon became easy to eat the bads, and we treated ourselves to whatever we liked.

Today we are back onto the path of a low glycemic diet and exercise. I got a call from my nurse co-ordinator who went through some dates with me for our second round of IVF and we are looking at starting Birth Control Pills around my Birthday (yey! Happy Birthday Me! Have a BCP!!!), starting stimulation injections around about 7th Jan 2016. So that is 2 months of healthy eating (minus Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays).

At the weekend we bought a new book called ‘the sugar free kitchen’ and we have stocked up the cupboards with the good stuff.

Does it seem ironic that there is ice cream on the front cover of this ‘sugar-free’ cook book??!

Our menu for the week looks like this:

Breakfast:

Toasted oats cereal with banana and milk

Lunches:

Chicken salad (no change this is what we usually eat, we just vary the meat and vegetables week to week)

Snacks:

carrots, celery, pistachios, wholewheat cracker bread with butter

Dinners:

Avocado, bacon and chile frittata with peas
Quinoa, squash and pine nut salad
Flat bread pizzas with garlic zucchini ribbons and salad
Squash and chorizo quiche
Italian meat sauce with whole wheat pasta

Homemade Treats:

Raspberry and mascarpone ice cream, frozen yoghurt cups, Ginger and oat no-bake cookies.

Quinoa, squash and pine nut warm salad. Actually pretty darn tasty and easy to make.

We are generally healthy eaters and cook all our own food from scratch anyway, but the biggest change is the treats. I get the sugar-low cravings in the mid-mornings and after coming home from work….this is when I typically snack and eat a lot of sugary things. So for the next week or so my body will hate me as I come off my sugar high. Hopefully it won’t be quite as bad as last time :-s

We are also getting back onto the exercise. I was going to be playing dodgeball this winter season, but the league was cancelled. And our local yoga centre shut down. So we have to motivate our butts to get moving. Chris is still recovering from his sprained ankle earlier in the year so we can’t do anything too energetic like insanity….but we will do some P90X again. We won’t follow the programme religiously, but enough to get a bit fitter than we currently are. So, here we go!

Bodies………………. ready??!?!?! Three….two……one…….*Whistle blows*

(If you ever watched the gladiators you should shout that sentence out loud in a Scottish referee type accent, if you have never watched the gladiators, I am sorry for my randomness but here is a video to help explain it)

Depressed or just lost??

November 3, 201513 Comments

My husband asked me last weekend if I thought I might be a little bit depressed. It wasn’t a surprising question because I had been moping for most of the day with very little to do around the house. He also pointed out to me that I have mentioned depression a couple of times in some of my more recent blog posts. I quickly said, ‘no, I really don’t think so’. I was able to answer it quickly because I have spent some time thinking about.

I have had “training” with all three of my deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on recognising the symptoms of depression in other people. I also have to complete annual training with my Army reserve unit on mental health awareness (although because I live in the US at the moment I have missed this over the last few years) I googled the symptoms a couple of months ago just to be sure. I don’t really fit. But if Chris is asking me, perhaps I should reconsider? Or is this one of those self-perpetuating moments where I end up actually becoming depressed because I think I might be depressed. And so I couldn’t help but think about it whilst at work today.

I am an ambitious woman. But my ambition has never been to be the greatest at everything. Somehow in my life I have managed to be successful in achieving whatever I want to do. I like to try new things, but I am not an innovator. I like to win, but not at the expense of others. I like to be busy, but rarely to exhaustion. I like change, but I don’t like surprises. I like to develop myself, but I rarely put my head out of the cockpit. Overall, I’d say these things have helped me to achieve success in everything I do, but there is always room for me to do better…and so I keep on going to achieve great things.

I have two degrees, various extra-qualifications, a successful career in defence, I’ve given something back to my country with my reservist duties, I have been awarded an MBE, I have various commendations and awards to my name. In my personal life I have an amazing husband, an amazing relationship, a supportive family, kind and loving friends, a ridiculously big house, a car, two of the cutest kitties, a nice pot of savings in case of a rainy day. I have travelled the world, I get to meet fascinating people and go to fascinating places. I have a body that is capable of achieving pretty much anything I want it to do – whether it is climb, ski, snowboard, hike, play softball, volleyball, squash, run a race, do yoga – do insanity!!! OK enough of my bragging, that is not my intention…my intention is to say just how damn lucky I am. What more in the world could a girl possibly want inlife?

Of course there are many more material things I could always ask for….but….

Two years ago we decided we wanted to grow our family and this is the one thing I want and can’t have right now. And it is completely out of my hands.

Previously I filled the void with my ambition, I compensated by taking courses, being busy at work, travelling, making new friends, planning epic holidays, buying new cars. And now…I’ve done it all. Really? Have I done it all? Of course not. But it feels like it. And now I am suffering. I’ve never been here before. Chris has never seen it in me before.

So, until I find some redirection, please forgive me whilst I wonder aimlessly (probably talking to myself). I’m OK. I am not depressed. I am just a little lost.

Source: http://www.cwmt.org.uk/parents-guide-to-depression/

My Mountains Monday Memoirs: Healing Holidays Days 1 to 9

October 27, 2015October 27, 201511 Comments

This is actually a very recent memory! But there there were lots of mountains in this holiday and we pretty much remained at altitude as we spent the majority of it on the Colarado Plateau. So here we go….!

This holiday was never meant to be a healing holiday. We had been planning this road trip for almost a year, we even delayed it from May to October because of the infertility treatment. But we decided to bite the bullet and book it for whatever stage we were at. We were cautious and kept things less adventurous and a little more comfortable just in case I was anywhere up to 5 months pregnant. We didn’t imagine that we would be leaving for this holiday with a cloud of sadness over our heads. But yet despite the sadness, this holiday came at a great time. It has been a chance to reset and refocus. I know not everyone can afford to take the time off work or even have the money to travel afar, but I highly recommend getting away somewhere, switching the phones off and avoiding the rest of the world to help heal the mind.

This road trip was always planned to be epic. And it sure was! Here is a brief run down of our adventure:

Day 1: Excitement sets in (NV). Finished work early (Friday)! Fly to Las Vegas, arrived late and stayed at nearby airport hotel. Teased by the sights and sounds of Vegas!!! There are even slot machines in the airport baggage terminal. Do people really get that addicted?

Day 2: Trippy & Valley of Fire State Park (AZ). Picked up our rental campervan – AKA Trippy! Can you guess why we called her Trippy??!

This was our 'cosy' home for the last two weeks - AKA Trippy.

This was our ‘cosy’ home for our holiday AKA Trippy.

We were upgraded from the small campervan we originally booked – woohoo! When I say upgrade – I mean we got an extra two feet of storage space! Which we were grateful for. Trippy had a table and chairs in the back that converted into a queen size bed and took up the whole width of the van. Cosy. In the boot (trunk), Trippy had a sink, mini refrigerator and gas burner. All that was left to do was sign our lives away on a dotted line and Trippy was ours for 13 days. We were off to our first stop – the Valley of Fire. It truly was like the valley had been set on fire, the rock was a beautiful orange/red in the midst of a green flat plateau.

Over looking the valley of fire

Day 3: Zion National Park (UT). Change of time zone. Travelling five states in 2 weeks that are in different time zones soon became confusing!

We hiked up Angel’s Landing – a challenging climb if you were to have vertigo.

We hiked and scrambled to the top of Angel’s landing

Some people turned around as their fear got the better of them. Chris and I on the other hand love this kind of hike/scramble. It is easy to tell why this park was called Zion.

If you have vertigo this is not a great hike for you!

The view from the top of Angel’s landing

Day 4: Bryce Canyon (UT). The weather turned and the rain came in. Our first disappointment came when we got the phone call from the horse riding tour company that they had to cancel the pony trek. We were gutted because this is something on our bucket list! It is also not a good idea to be in the lower rim of the canyon due to the high risk of flash floods, so we didn’t hike too far down into the canyon either.

Bryce canyon and the Hoo Doos

According to the native Americans the ‘hoodoos’ formed when a tribe who did bad things were turned into stone by Coyote. We don’t know the exact story because the story can only be told during winter time (according to tradition – the park upholds this out of respect for the tradition) – we will just have to go back some day in the winter to find out! Despite the disappointments it was one of the most unique and spectacular places I have ever been to.

Day 5: Grand Canyon North Rim (AZ). The rain followed us, and the clouds too. Our first sneak peak of the Grand Canyon was somewhat disappointing.

A view of Angel’s point on the North Rim – it was pretty cloudy. There was a whole canyon hiding behind this!

We were teased by little breaks in the clouds, but we could not get an impression of its greatness. We waited for three hours at one of the view points for the clouds to break. All of a sudden there was sunshine and we ran to the view point! It wasn’t completely clear, but we could see a bit further down in to the canyon.

Chris got a great shot with the canyon in the clouds

So we gave up and checked into the campsite. This was when I got the phone call from my clinic telling me I should be having weekly blood tests. I felt a bit emotional after this call because it was the first time in days that I had really thought about what the future 9 months wasn’t going to be.

As there was a bar at the Canyon lodge we decided to hike the 1.5 miles from the campsite to the bar just as the sun was setting. As we reached the lodge, we were blessed with the most incredible sunset as the clouds dissipated! It was truly magical – great things come to those who wait came into mind!

Finally! This is what the Grand Canyon looks like!

After our first alcoholic beverage of the holiday – and my first drink in months we hiked in the dark back to Trippy. Chris took some wonderful starlight photos from across the canyon. Just as we made it back it started to tip it down with rain. What an incredible day – full of highs and lows in emotions.

Day 6. Horse Shoe Bend & the Antelope Slot Canyons (AZ). Wow. The drive from the Grand Canyon to Page, Arizona, was spectacular! Along the way we stopped at the Colorado River Horse Shoe Bend. It was busy with tourists, but we were able to sit down for about 30 minutes whilst we waited for the shadows to move out for Chris’s photoshoot he wanted to get. We sat and people watched. So many people literally took a picture and headed back to their car. It made me sad that this amazing feat of nature was not really taken in for all it’s incredible glory. But hey. We can’t all be nature lovers right?!

Horse Shoe Bend in all its glorious colours

Following the incredible drive we arrived at Page where we had booked a Native American tour guide into the Antelope Canyons. The canyon itself was impressive. We were hearded through quickly like sheep. Our tour guide was informative, but the crowds made me sick. Apparently there are many other slot canyons like this in the Native American reservations but this was only one of two open to the public…and it is incredibly popular, apparently over the last year or so business has been booming because of the internet. It’s great that so many people want to appreciate it, but I worry about the conservation of it.

Chris took some beautiful shots of the formations

it’s a guitar….

Day 7. Four Corners and Monument Valley (AZ, UT, CO & NM). We spent most of the day on the road, but managed to stop at the four corners monument…

One limb in each of the four states – CO, UT, NM & AZ

…put all four limbs in each state all at the same time! We also visited Monument Valley which is where a lot of wild west movies have been filmed. It was truly an outstanding park.

Monument valley – everything image you had of a wild western was shaped by this landscape

Sadly there was not enough time to do a hike to one of the ‘monument rocks’ and we couldn’t drive.

Day 8. Mesa Verde National Park (CO). A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. We managed to shake off the crowds, Mesa Verde was a lot quieter, there were no coach tours bugging me (I am completely selfish when it comes to enjoying nature – I want to enjoy it in peace and quiet without Japanese and Korean tourists shouting and selfy-ing everywhere I looked). A lot of Mesa Verde had closed for the season, but we did get a tour round one of the more ‘adventurously located’ settlements of the cliff dwellers. What struck me as really odd was that what we were looking at were rock dwellings that seemed to be from thousands of years ago. But in reality, they were only 800 years old…it was amazing to compare the dwellings in Europe at that time and how different life was for the Puebloans (what I mean is how undeveloped they seemed compared to Europe).

Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde

Our tour around one cliff dwelling was a little ‘adventurous’ I was super impressed to see an 87 yr old lady climb this ladder successfully! Go Girl!

We hung around the park to have dinner in our campervan and watched the sunset over the mountains. Chris took some more amazing starlight pics.

Trippy under the star light at Mesa Verde

Day 9. Santa Fe (NM). We weren’t really sure what there was to do in Santa Fe, we had a walking tour planned and knew we wanted to try some New Mexico cuisine. We were surprised at the incredible art galleries here. We also saw America’s ‘oldest church and building’ (considering we had just come from mesa Verde I am not sure they could claim the oldest building title). I chose a mexican restaurant and was excited to be eating Mexican food that was actually spicy! Where we live in Virginia the Mexican food has little spice to it and is covered in cheese – more Tex-Mex than Mexican. So it was a real treat, and poor Chris ate it despite his ‘sweating’ from the spice.

America’s oldest Bell in the Oldest Church – with whole bunch of Milagros (representing miracles) pinned into the wood

How lucky are we? Just 9 days in and it was already epic! Days 10-16 to come next week!

Mountain Lesson #8: Enjoy the journey. Sure the infertility journey can be a long one, but sometimes you need to take a little diversionary break to feel the power of mother nature and help lift your mood to higher states of happiness. Take a breath, take a rest, soak up the sun – let the beauty of the mountains reset you.

A discovery – How far are we willing to go?

October 26, 201515 Comments

Whilst on our epic South West USA road trip, Chris and I had lots of time to talk to each other. You could almost say we lived in each others pockets for two weeks…some couples might break…but for Chris and I we kind of thrive on it, and it brings us closer together. I think we only had one small ‘argument’ on this trip, but you could probably describe it as more of a strongly heated debate rather than an argument as such. Anyway, the point is, we had lots of time to talk about some of the bigger things in life. Surprisingly, we didn’t talk about our future as prospective parents for several days. It wasn’t until I received a phone call from our fertility clinic that we got around to talking about it again.

The topic of conversation was how much more can we deal with all the infertility treatment? Can we deal with another miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy? The likelihood for another ectopic pregnancy almost doubles after you have had one. What about dealing with a negative result? We discussed whether to transfer our one frozen blastocyst or to go for another round of IVF/ICSI. Yes, a frozen transfer would require injections, but I would avoid the egg stimulation and egg retrieval process which, for me, was very painful the last time around. Chris wants to avoid me being in pain as much as possible. He hates seeing me in that way.

I understand his point of view, it is hard for a partner to see their loved ones in pain over which they have no control. But I feel differently, I feel like I know what to expect, how to better deal with the symptoms and feel overall less anxious (although I think I was pretty cool in my attitude about the first IVF cycle). I feel ready to get some embryos frozen into reserve.

I am 32 about to turn 33. If we go for the frozen transfer and we succeed in a pregnancy (!!!!! That would be awesome!!!) then I will be 35 by the time we are ready to have a second go at it for child #2 – my egg quality is likely to reduce and we could be facing an additional factor to our unexplained infertility. So I figure it is best to do one more IVF/ICSI cycle now and we have one in reserve. Perhaps I sound a little greedy in this respect – we are lucky to have one frozen right now! I don’t mean to be – but I am an operational analyst after all, so I can’t but help try to figure out the optimal solution to a problem.

I explained to Chris my reasoning for going ahead with another round, and he gets it. He admitted he hadn’t thought about age related factors for the future. So we have both agreed that tomorrow we will ask our doctor about going ahead with a new round of IVF/ICSI.

But this isn’t really where the story ends. I think Chris and I have different ‘lines’ to draw under how far we are generally willing to go to get our own baby in our arms. How many times is enough to say we gave it our best shot? How many times can we deal with sadness? Will we ever become numb to it? Depending on the nature of the outcome for round 2 will create different visionary paths in our heads for each of us, we discovered that they are not aligned at the moment.

This isn’t an easy topic to talk about without accidentally hurting each other with words that first come to mind…. so we are going to try writing down our feelings on paper and swapping our ideas so that we can understand each other’s perspectives. I don’t know whether it will work, I hope it will help us at least gain a respect for each other’s feelings. Love and marriage is unconditional, but feelings can easily get hurt when we are talking about something so passionate as becoming parents and how to do it. Infertility knocks you for six when you discover that you can’t become a parent the ‘normal’ way. So I think it is healthy to have this exploration of feelings and keep things open between each other.

Perhaps we will share these letters to each other on the blog at a later date, but for now we just need to focus on getting to the same place together.

My Mountains Monday Memoirs: The Dolomites

October 5, 2015October 12, 20152 Comments

How does one describe the Dolomites? These incredible mountains are unlike any other in the world. A picture barely paints a thousand words in this case, but here is one anyway.

They are located in the North East of Italy, and so naturally I attempted to learn some basic Italian before we started our three week adventure. Little did I know that actually they predominantly speak Ladin (unique to the area), German then Italian. Fail!

After 6 months of being deployed in Afghanistan this holiday was our treat to ourselves. It was going to be epic. And it was. But I won’t tell you about the whole holiday because I could be here forever, but I want to tell you about one particular mountain trek.

As we packed our bags for the four day wilderness* hike Chris asked me how well I had slept. So I told him about my dream, it was vivid – Several unknown males asked to marry me, one after the after, I kept telling them no, I did not want to marry them! Apparently I forgot to tell Chris that the reason I didn’t want to marry them was because I had someone else on my mind to marry, Chris, of course! But apparently although I assumed this was a given, Chris thought in his mind that I just didn’t want to get married. Period. Full Stop.

Thinking nothing of telling my dream to Chris, we jumped in the car with our two friends we were travelling with and drove up the windy roads to our start point. Our friends wished us goodbye as they had other plans to see Lake Garda and stay in the warm sunshine. After a whole lot of faffing around we finally got onto the gondola to take us half way up the mountain. As we found ourselves in the peace and quiet in the silence of the alpine pastures, half way up Chris asked me a strange question about the meaning of life. I brushed him off because we had an adventure ahead of us and I wasn’t in the mood! Once we were up the top of the gondola, Chris was faffing. And I mean FAFFING. I was getting a little irritated because we were running a bit behind schedule and we had a refugio dinner to get to about 15 miles away!!!

5 minutes into our hike, we were still in the green alpine pastures, but really the views were spectacular as they were in dolomites. Chris took his bag off his back and started faffing around, again. I was mildly irritated, but Chris called me over to say he had haribo in his bag. Now I was really mad because that meant for the last 4 days he had hidden it from me!! OK I am not that fickle, but really Haribo is one of my favourite bads. When I came over he pulled out a ring box with a jelly haribo ring in it. “Ummmmm are you kidding me??” were the first words out of my mouth. Apparently, I should have said “Yes, Chris I would love to marry you!” – well I don’t know these things! It’s not like I have had men proposing to me left right and centre to practice my response (except for in my dreams the previous night!!).

The ring Chris Proposed with – yes it is haribo!

Of course, you know the story, because Chris is my husband now. But let me ask you this…would you say “no” to a man you were just about to spend 4 days hiking in the wilderness with??! Could have been a bit awkward. Just kidding, I said yes and meant it. Chris was very nervous I was actually going to turn him down based off my dream.

It was weird being engaged and not being able to tell anyone about it until we could find some phone reception! But the mountains are good for the soul. The four days helped give us time to think things through on our terms. It was a complete surprise to me, although some people had suggested that Chris might propose on this romantic holiday to Italy, but I thought it would be too cliché and obvious that I thought nothing of it. How wrong was I?

Yes, this mountain was memorable, not just because of its beauty, but because it was one of the best days of my life.

Of course – Chris had chosen a real ring too! He’s not that stupid 🙂

Mountain Lesson Number 3: Always expect the unexpected and be prepared for anything.

*Wilderness in this case mean travelling from refugio to refugio – a kind of mountain hostel.

It starts with the egg….

May 31, 2015May 31, 20156 Comments

30yr old nothing told me about this book……“It starts with the egg” by Rebecca Fett. I looked into the excellent reviews and decided to order it from amazon. I am not going to do a book review here…but I will mention a few things the book has made me think about. The book has certainly opened my eyes to new things I have not considered before:

Adding supplements to your diet such as Vitamin D, Folic Acid and CoQ10.
Avoiding toxins that can harm the development of eggs and increase the risk of miscarriage.
Fertility friendly diet by reducing intake of simple carbohydrates, sugar and trans-fats.

There are other things talked about in the book which are not relevant to me, but relevant to ladies with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and a little bit about sperm. The book is supported with lots of scientific evidence. Certainly the list of supporting research looks compelling. But to be honest, I have not had much of a chance to read up about it and look at the evidence against it 🙂

The suggestions Ms Fett makes to improve egg quality are generally related to living a ‘healthy lifestyle’, but there are a few things that we may consciously try to adapt into our lives.

First of all, supplements. I was taking a multi-vitamin gummy that included 400mg of Folic Acid rather than the standard 200mg, which our nurse said was sufficient. But there are other supplements that I could benefit from when trying to conceive other than Folic Acid that supports healthy egg development. Including CoQ10 and Vitamin D, amongst others. So I have purchased these two supplement gummies which provide all the goodies to support good development of eggs (the irony being they are full of sugar…keep reading to understand the irony!!) I chose gummies because my stomach can’t handle the coating of most multi-vitamin pills.

Next, exposure to toxins such as BPA (Bisphenol-A) and phthalates (pronounced THAL-LATES by the way, I had to look that one up ;-)). BPA is in a lot of plastics such as food wrapping, tupperware, water bottles etc. There is a lot on the internet you can read about the bad things about BPA. Among other associated health issues there is evidence to suggest that this toxin can affect egg quality. Worryingly, even ‘BPA free’ plastics may still be toxic.

Pthalates is another toxin that may impact egg quality and has also been linked to miscarriage, this is found in soft plastic, vinyl, cleaning products, nail polish and fragrances. Like BPA, phthalates seems to be everywhere. The CDC has a quick fact sheet on phthalates here.

So how much of this toxic stuff do we have in our household? Well, all our food goes into tupperware. We drink from plastic wrapped and packaged food except on occasion when we buy fancy organic items like juice. To what extent will we be able to avoid BPA? Well it can be quite hard. Here is an article about 6 steps to avoid BPA. I also wear perfume, wash my hair in this stuff and so on and so forth. Here is an excellent article on how to avoid phthalates too. We can start making steps towards this, but it will require some lifestyle changes with tupperware and beauty products!! And this all costs money in the end, quite frankly we are not made of money, so we can try to reduce exposure, but we will not get rid of it completely.

Finally diet. It is no surprise that poor diet is correlated to fertility issues. However, there are some interesting facts in this book that made me think twice. Namely sugar and carbohydrates.

Now, I will admit that I am a bit of a sugar addict. I generally prefer artificial sweetners in my tea and drinks, but I do have a sweet tooth for gummy sweets such as haribo and other desserts. If I had to choose between a starter, main or dessert, I’d always go for the dessert. Having said that, I do eat healthily in general with lots of fruit, veg and healthy main meals. So giving up sugar is going to be difficult. I’m not sure I can go cold turkey on it. For example, having a cup of tea in the morning is my ‘wake up’ tool. I hate tea without sweetner. But I could try to give up eating fresh cookies that I buy every other day at work and give up desserts. Did you know that sugar is even in cornflakes and rice crispies? Chris and I tend to eat granola or other ‘organic’ breakfast cereals, but even these have a lot of sugar in them. Sugary breakfasts will also be hard to give up.

Giving up carbohydrates completely would be bad for you. But giving up simple carbohydrates and replacing them with complex carbs to give a slow release of energy through the day would be a good thing. You have to read the book to understand in detail why this is good for egg development. Chris and I eat healthy dinners in general anyway, so replacing white rice and pasta should be quite easy. However, most brown rice and pasta takes a long time to cook, it will just take longer to prepare dinner.

What’s a girl to do?

To how extreme does one go with this? How much is too much? How far is too far? Is this just another new check list of living a healthy lifestyle? Is everything OK but just in moderation? What is in moderation? Should we just go cold turkey and cut it all out? Should we both do this together? We will never really know the answer to these questions…but Chris and I will keep talking about these things and try to work together to make any changes we see that will benefit us both in the long run.

Now…what am I going to do with this jar of haribo sat in my cupboard??????!!!!!!

mmmmm haribo

Suggestions for keeping your sanity on the Emotional Roller Coaster of Infertility Treatment

May 22, 20151 Comment

In our pack of homework there was a little article from our fertility clinic’s resident psychologist. I am sure she wouldn’t mind me copying it to my blog to share with everyone else if it helps anyone else. Thank you Dr Barbara Kersey for your wise words….

1. Lower your expectations of yourself at this time. Infertility treatment is stressful. Learn to say “no” to other commitments that are not absolutely necessary. Chris and I both agreed we need to do this more.

2. Don’t listen to “horror stories” from other patients or friends. Keep your own counsel in the waiting room. Exchange only helpful, positive suggestions with others. I haven’t heard too many horror stories on the blogs. I don’t go to forums too much because this is where I have come across horror stories. I’ll be honest, I tend to find bloggers a bit more educated in their opinions compared to those who may be posting on forums. That doesn’t mean all people on forums are not educated, I just find that sometimes forums can be a little laisez faire behind posts. So far we have not spoken to anyone in the waiting room, and we probably won’t; it’s quite a daunting place, but you never know if someone there has just had a miscarriage or just found out they are pregnant. I’m not inclined to start any conversations here.

3. Make it your business to be as calm as possible when you are here for treatment. This won’t guarantee that you will get pregnant, but it can only help. Whenever I have an appointment I have had my blood pressure taken – there is definitely a correlation behind the type of appointment and my increased blood pressure! But I have noticed that it was lower for my third IUI. Hopefully that is because I am relaxing a bit more.

4. To help develop your sense of calm, try yoga, meditation, full body massage, journaling, walking etc. ANYTHING that helps keep your balance. I love yoga, blogging, walking – I think one can always add in a massage or two here or there!

5. Recogonise that the staff is here to help you. Anxiety and anger are natural feelings, but won’t help you (or anyone else) to let staff bet the recipient of these feelings. We spoke with a nurse once about this issue. I said that they must have a very difficult job when dealing with such sensitive patients. The nurse said she finds it hard and there are very difficult days, but equally a number of rewarding days. She never knows how a patient will react so tends to keep very reserved. My hats go off to the doctors and nurses working in this industry for the challenges they face everyday.

6. Get outside support. Try Resolve, the national support group for couples who deal with infertility. For information go to www.resolve.org. Once softball league is finished next week, we might go to one of our local meetings. We both agree it might be a good idea to meet some others and get some support.

7. Recognise that infertility is a COUPLES’ issue. Keep the lines of communication open with your partner. Infertility is a huge stress on marriage. Get outside help if needed. Well Chris wrote a blog post about this the other day…so I won’t say much more other than he is a great rock to me, I hope I am to him too. I hope we can keep doing this all the way until we have a little F. (Obviously keeping the whole marriage thing up afterwards too 😉 )

Happy Friday Y’all!!! (Check me out with my American speak!!!)

Facts are stubborn things

May 18, 20151 Comment

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

John Adams, ‘Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,’ December 1770

Facts are stubborn things, and in a court of law the statement attributed to Mr. Adams makes great sense. ‘…Whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” What this quote fails to address are the situations in which emotion outweigh fact, override fact and outright overwhelm fact,

We are meeting with our IVF counselor this week to discuss the timetable for our next treatment. We will sit and discuss the day by day steps to be taken, hear factual descriptions of the laboratory procedures and be given % chances of success. All the facts will be laid out before us, helping us understand how our chances of conceiving will be good. And yet, we will probably leave the meeting with some degree of trepidation, some niggling concern, and perhaps some fear….what if it doesn’t work this time? The cause of these feeling is emotion, overriding the logic and the facts.

The facts of IVF are only part of the story, in fact (pun intended) they are only a small part of the IVF journey, Emotions are the main event, and this is where the trouble starts. Emotions are irrational, they can sneak up on us and they make this entire process much harder. Couples going through infertility treatment have to deal with a lot of new facts whilst at the same time dealing with a lot of new emotions, many of which will be strong emotions. Whilst the IVF clinics are sensitive to this it is not their role to handle the emotions for the couples, that is something the couples must do for themselves.

Couples are a team, and strong couples will work together through the hard times, supporting each other, with each person playing a part. Usually hard times impact one partner more than another, such as a the death of a relative. This is not to say couples don’t share pain but there are very few occasions that truly impact both people equally; the loss of a child perhaps being the most obvious. IVF is a little different, the hard times are experienced by both people at the same time but the nature of the hardship is likely to be different for each person. With IVF it is rare for the issue to be linked to both partners, so perhaps one partner may have feelings of guilt that they are ‘at fault’. Conversely, the other partner may feel guilty because they don’t have any issues and therefore are causing pressure for the person with the issue. This type of second guessing is all to easy, and comes from us making assumptions and trying to apply logic (often flawed logic) to try an understand emotional situations.

Couples that do not communicate often and openly are liable to fall victim to this second guessing and assumption making. Couples that try to conform to stereo types are also at risk. If a man feels that he should be supporting his partner and should be the ‘pillar, the rock, the strong supportive one’, then he is not being honest to himself about his emotions and he is not being honest with her about how he feels. This type of approach can be done with the best of intentions but cause the worst of responses. The man may appear to be unaffected by the issues and thus the woman may wonder if she is over reacting and end up hiding her feelings. This is the complete opposite of what the man may have intended.

So what am I getting at here.? Openness, honesty and regular communication can help prevent misunderstandings when dealing with strong emotions. We (Dani and I) have found that talking a little and often has helped us, talking in the shower together, whilst preparing dinner or when driving to the shops. There is no schedule for us to talk about the emotions we feel, there is no time that is off limits and this helps us…at least I think it helps us….perhaps Dani is not being open with me and I am making assumptions….see how easy it is to get caught in this line of thought?

By being open about how we feel means we don’t get washed away in a torrent of emotion when faced with tough facts. Knowing that we are not hiding anything from each other makes the journey a little easier, a little safer, and a little less scary.

The great dismal swamp – not quite so dismal

May 4, 20154 Comments

For the last nine days I’ve had a break from blogging and we are on a break from trying to conceive. I needed both a bit of mental break and a physical break, trying to catch a breather in preparation for our ‘Next Steps’ appointment with our RE tomorrow. But taking a break hasn’t been plain sailing. I have had a couple of ‘break downs’ in the last few days, mostly ending with me snapping at Chris and/or crying as a a snivelling mess. Why? Because I hate this limbo ‘not knowing’ business.

Unexplained infertility is a sucky non explanation for why we haven’t been able to conceive so far, even with a little help. There are so many questions I have that may never be answered…and it is difficult to get out of this hole of asking “why?” and “what if?”. Chris has been amazing, he is strong and can handle my random outbursts of crying, reminding me not to bottle all up. But I can see it in him too, he has the same questions as me. I know at tomorrow’s appointment we will not have many of these questions answered immediately, but it will help make the path a little clearer in the next steps. It’s the baby steps I need to help keep me sane, a break has so far been physically good for my body but mentally it has been hard.

So where better to get one’s self out of a dark hole? The great dismal swamp…this place can take your breath away, and can be anything but dismal. The swamp is huge, over 112 000 acres and in the heart of this wildlife refuge is an amazing lake, lake Drummond, that is an impressive 3000 acres. Apparently it is one of two only natural lakes in Virginia.

Lake Drummond at the great dismal swamp

The swamp also has a lot of history steeped in it, particularly as this is where many fugitive slaves lived, under the cover the swamp land. I’ll tell you something, the mosquitoes are horrific in the summer. This wildlife refuge is always so quiet, and it is easy to quickly feel like you are in complete wilderness, it is anything but dismal.

This time of year is renowned for rare warbler birds and many stunning butterflies. So today we took our bikes and got on the trails. In addition to the many sightings of deer we were pleasantly surprised to see thousands of hairy caterpillars, munching so loudly it sounded like it was raining in the swamp.

Hundreds of hairy caterpillars and wishes too!

I feel refreshed this evening after our mini trip to the swamp. No more tears, I’ve promised Chris this, for at least a few more days anyway 😉 I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to our appointment tomorrow…..