Well, what do you know?

Not much, really.

I'm not a creative person. I'll say this and be greeted with howls of dissent by colleagues who point to some interesting new idea I've whipped up for some subject or whatever. But truly, I'm not awfully creative. Not for me the younger classes with their posters and power points, give me the older kids any day. I can teach them to structure an analysis, no problem, just don't ask me to encourage creative writing. Even when the 40th essay earnestly and erroneously tells me that Atticus didn't change a thing in Maycomb, I push on. Creative writing, sure, I'll give them the standard, "show, don't tell", use lots of adverbs/adjectives, vary sentence length, introduce dialogue, blah blah blah. And when imagination withers, yellows and fails, out comes that old cliche, beloved of the teacher with nothing else to offer:

Write about what you know.

Always slightly surreal telling 16 year olds to write about what they know. Looking back on my life, I can't say I knew a damn thing of import back in that day.

Write about what you know.

I'd like to say goodbye, finally to this stage in my life. I can't see myself continuing to blog about this much, or anything else. Exhaustion presses down on my weary shoulders, yet I ambivalently look around for a light, a path, a solution....anything.

I'm embarrassingly aware of the fact that most Infertility blogs end on a high note, with a BFP, final success, pregnancy and the birth of a kidlet or quite often two, leaving no real need for the continuation of IF-blog-catharsis syndrome.

I'd like to say goodbye, but I guess I still need the outlet.

There is a light that never goes out.....

.....yet I sometimes wish it would. It's not a brilliant light; it's desperate and flickers with fraught, anxious emotion. It's the murky scintilla of hope that draws back the determined, time and again. Some may call us foolhardy. Whatever it is, the primal urge to procreate is so ludicrously unyielding that it leaves me breathless at times. Some of us long-time ACers talk about the goalposts constantly shifting with each failed, despairing attempt.

My goalposts are now so far outta the footy field, that I'd need binoculars to spy them.

Eggs or body? The great unexplained.

If body, I can stim yet again with the hope of getting enough to freeze so I can look for a surrogate, one way or the other.

If eggs, maybe it's time to source a donor.

I dunno.

A Day in the Life.

Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head....

Well, sorta.

I very nearly called this instalment Life on Mars coz it kinda is. It's somewhat akin to a prolonged, slightly uncomfortable but rather easy, phase in one's twenties. Being childless, that is.

For your edification, may I present An Infertility Friend's production of, ChildlessOldCrones.com.

Wake up, go to work. Finish work, hang out, have a glass or two of cheap vino. Hey, we teachers earn crud, y'all.

Drive home, boil some pasta or whatever, fix a friendly brandy, lime and soda, sit in bed with my laptop and TV. Sleep.

Repeat X 5. Then, weekend. Sleep in till 10, turn on ducted heating, stroll down the street and get the paper. Turn on iPod, think about doing some housework but go shopping down Brunswick St instead. Buy some stunning clothes for the next special occasion, grab a large dish of latte with free biscotti from Retro bar, head home to chill some more. Catch up with season 3 of The Tudors on my foxtel IQ, open a bottle of Sauv blanc, toss some pasta through pesto and relax. Think about trip to Vanuatu in 2 weeks.

This is a typical week for me. I don't miss the kid thing in reality, because as much as I attempt to, I have no real idea what it entails. It's all a wee bit hypothetical, particularly as it will truly always be a day in someone else's life.

Gotta see the babeee?

I proffer, most humbly, to my kind readers, abject apologies for the now, dramatic irony inherent in the nomenclature of this here blog. I just dunno how to change it! Clearly, no-one is gonna see a baby here, any time soon.

It's a strange place to be in. Last night I tossed and turned and fretted. In the morning, it occurred to me that miscarriage #5 would have been due right about now. Bummer.

I don't know where to fit in. The women at my work who have plugged the career-climbing gap in my 4-years interstate leave are actually slightly younger than me now. Yet, I sense some suspicion from that direction. Not for me the daily run from the office at 3.15 to pick up school-aged kids. I can easily hang around till 6.30 working, networking etc, and most days I do. It has been suggested to me by an older, childless colleague that I am regarded with tentative concern by these women, who have no idea where I fit in. Just what do you make of a 40-year-old without kids? Sadly, I can't help them there.

The other 2 "older" childless women profess proudly that they never wanted kids. I'm not yet at that stage of justification or subterfuge. Still I say, "it doesn't happen for everyone", with a knowing stare, daring people to query further. They never do, anymore.

Update from a Batcoat.

Yes, I am. Just a wee bit, but that's okay, man. Just because I'm so popular, yuk yuk.

It's been a while. I've been super duper busy. I am back to teaching at my old school, full-time. I LOVE my classes. I want to teach them forever, they are not only the bomb but even, somewhat embarrassingly, extend to being da bomb. I feel useful, stimulated, engaged. I have the footy boys in Year 10 quoting Macbeth. ["Miss, should I use 'Stars hide your fires, Let not light see my black and deep desires' to show how Macbeth is sinking more into evil?"] I LOVE teaching literature.

And all is well, unless I think of how I've ended up a childless, batcoat, old crone.

PGD crashed and burned. Sadly, my over/high-stimming smugness has been shot down in a metaphorical ring of peri-menopausal fire. Two fucking eggs. Not even enough to biopsy. Did a day 2 X 2 Tx, just for shizz and gigglez and to say I've tried day 2, since those fucking perfect blasts never got me nowhere, dude. This was in June, when I was way too busy to blog. I've also been horrendously ill for most of the year with my usual chesty ailments, certainly not assisted by shutting down my entire immune system in the name of Colorado.

This was the one. You know when they say you should stop IVF when the pain of doing it exceeds the pain of being childless? That was the one. Technically, stim cycle 6. I never had implantation in a stim, yet conceived naturally 3 times and on 2 out of 3 natural Fets. I still don't know why I'm infertile. Science can't tell me, and I'm too old to benefit from any miraculous discoveries in the next few years. FSH is now 9.9 on CD4 and AMH is 6.7, standard for an almost 40-year-old and not so good, fertility wise.

And just because I basically crack myself up, consistently, I saw a naturopath who thinks she can regulate my hormones and help me conceive. Insert mega rolleyes here, if you please! And to add to the general jocularity, I asked my FS for a script for Clomid, yay! Gotta exhaust all options, I say.

I have had moments of deep, dark sadness; just for a moment though. I won't wallow; there are social events to attend, career ladders to climb, countries to travel and teenagers to inspire. No time for self-pity.

Stay tuned?