Three's a crowd

I am having a fairly crappy baby-day. One of those ones that starts out fine, things plod along as normal, and then WHAM! you get hit with one baby-news after another. I know I should stop feeling sorry for myself and just get on with it, but it sucks, so excuse me if I get it all out of my system and vent a little.

This morning we visited my lovely new gynie at Queen Charlotte's. I had a scan and the news was all good; two follicles - one teeny tiny one and one nice big 17mm one - and "perfect" lining in my uterus. My blood results are back and everything is normal and as it should be.

Whooopppeeeee.... time to start baby-making. Again.

That's the thing of it; all the news is good, as it is, I presume, every other month, and we're still here trying month after month for a baby. Will it ever happen? Is it more frustrating to know everything is normal and still you don't conceive, or to know something is wrong and you can't conceive? I'm not sure I'll ever be faced with the answer to this. But for me, to know that all is "as it should be" means I will get my hopes up, build up my aspirations and end up dreaming about being pregnant before this cycle is out... and most likely all for nothing.

The fall down is so much further and more painful when you've allowed yourself to climb to such dumb heights in the first place.

But I was on a high this morning; good scan, nice doc, the traffic was being kind all the way to work. Hey, it's even a Friday so here comes the weekend! I had two meetings set up in the office today. In the first meeting, with my mentor who is a lovely man, we were engrossed in a very interesting chat about research, funding and my possible future at the university; all good stuff. His phone rang and he apologised and answered it. His voice and his face said it all. His daughter, who had been married a few months ago, was on the line telling him she was pregnant. He was delighted. She was delighted. Wonderful news. He hung up and apologised, and said I could probably guess what it was about. I mumbled some congratulations and tried to make light of it;
ME: "Is this their first?"
HIM: "Yeah, but she's been very broody so we knew it wouldn't be long"...
ME: Long silence while I bite my tongue...
while inside my head a voice is screaming "BUT I'M BROODY TOO ... WHY NOT ME? WHEN WILL IT BE ME?!?!"
His phone rang again and it was his wife, hugely excited at the news.... I could almost picture my parents having the same conversation one day... maybe.

Then my phone rang and I excused myself and took the call outside; it was good news - my doc ringing to tell me my tests were all fine. Great. See you in a month, then. Back in infertility land again.

I went straight from that meeting over to another in a separate building, where baby number 2 was. This time it was a lovely little eight-week old girl - my colleague brought her in as she hadn't a babysitter to cover our meeting. She was lovely; I got a little cuddle; brought some presents and we basically oohed and ahhhed over the baby while discussing continuous professional development issues and our project's completion date.
My colleague joked to me: "You're not getting broody, are you?"
I didn't even have the strength to joke back, I just replied something along the lines of "We'd love a baby but it hasn't happened... been trying for a coupla years..." and let the conversation drop. When she asked what we were going to do about it and I mumbled something incomprehensible, she very sensitively left it at that and got back to discussing the merits of pram versus sling...

So eventually I slinked back to the security of my office and opened up my emails. Lots of work to do before I head home. Thinking: I'll just check my private ones before I get down to the nitty-gritty. And there it was; baby incident number 3. I had sent an old work colleague an email yesterday wishing her well for her new life, and asking how her wedding had been last month. She sent me a lovely long reply, along with pictures of their wedding and telling me how happy she was. And then she hit me - BAM! - "you might've noticed I've put on a bit of weight lately; I am 18 weeks pregnant"

I haven't yet got round to composing the right kind of reply.

Is nowhere safe? Not the office, not email, definitely not the street with all those prams and buggies about the place... Is there nowhere safe for an infertile like me to go and hide for a few hours? While I think about having sex tonight because the doc said so? Did all these people just have babies because they wanted to? Did it just happen naturally, normally, accidentally?

My dear mentor was so excited about being a grandad he started telling me about "this time 30 years ago" when he and his wife hadn't been too careful, and she thought she was pregnant - he'd had to take her sample to the chemist for the result, and how happy he was coming back to the office and telling everyone... Do people really still do that?

And if they do, could they just, please, not tell me about it.... Not until Monday at least, when we will have done our bit and I can move on to the hope and naivity of the two-week-wait until my period's due.

GG