Fear and Self-loathing.

I weary of the myriad, quotidian concerns of the day and look forward to a new, improved year. Some of my resolutions are to get fit and to only listen to 60s music.

Besides the novels I will be required to teach, I also resolve to read one extra book a month. I say book rather than novel, as I find my addiction to historical biography will not yet wane. In fact, Stella Tillyard's "A Royal Affair" about my favorite Georgian dynasty will be accompanying me on the plane tomorrow to the fair isles of New Zealand, where we have 2 weeks of R, R and R ahead. In addition, I must read Robert Drewe's "Shark Net" and "Twelfth Night", to prepare for my classes next year. As an avid Shakespeare enthusiast, "Miss, how do you understand all this stuff?", I look forward to the melancholy, comic verse of the Bard in a play as yet untaught by myself.

I resolve to only listen to 60s music. Or 60's inspired music, which now broadens the parameters exponentially. Life's too short.

I will be running the 10km Run Melbourne and the 10km run at the Gold Coast marathon the following week. Optimism is not always a bad thing.

Happy New Year.

Youse are all biatches.

Yes, this will be an angry, uncomprehending post, full of sound and fury and I guess, like life, signifying nothing. Christmas does this to the fertility-challenged.

1. Must go to husband's family's Xmas day nightmare where there will be 5 babies. Lord, take me now.

2. Must shop for said 5 babies. Yes, joy of the season, I get to shop for toys and clothes for FIVE OTHER BABIES, YAY!

3. Bosses' Xmas party tonight at which a fucking 40 year old was passing around her phone with her fucking 13 week scan on it. Again I ask, where, when, how, why??? There is no god.

4. I'm still fucking fat from almost 6 years of failed pregnancies and IVF, while all the breeders I know seem to drop their fucking baby weight within months of giving birth. Babies AND thinness, fuck dat!

Merry X-mas.

Infertility Porn, just say no.

I hereby pledge to remove myself from situations in which I may be tempted to continue my association with the nefarious infertility industry, AKA, Infertility Porn. This stuff is not good for my mental health.

I hereby promise not to frequent parenting fora, in particular, the AC sections of said parenting fora. I will not read about people who spent 2 years TTC, then needed IVF to conceive, then popped out a natural bebe 5 minutes after this one, on the grounds that my head might explode. Seems not all infertilities are equal on this planet.

I will not read about celebrity fertiles who manage to pop out 5 spawn within 6 years in their early 40s. (that would be you, Jane Kennedy) How? When? Why? And in fact, what the fucking fuck????

I will no longer make faux-happy social mention of my childlessness, as if it were some wholly planned choice all along. "Yes, we cunningly planned our barrenness in order to travel, drink and otherwise enjoy our lives." Puke.

I will think about converting my blog to the movie-review blog I've always wanted to write.

Giddy-up!

Donation Commotion.

I hereby give warning that the following diatribe may offend anyone who has used any form of donations with which to create their families. Hey, my blog, my shit, right?

So we come to that time in every old, infertile slapper's life, when the only possible way of creating a family is through some sort of donation. You know, some weird sci-fi type shit that isn't really sci-fi anymore, thanks to modern technology. But in my head, it's still playing God n shit, mkay? And this comes from someone who has no concept of a personal god, in any way, shape or form.

I try, I try, I try really hard to come to grips with the fact that having a child, any child at all, is meant to be preferable to having none. But I struggle. I play the guilt angle, you know, why should my husband miss out on the joy of breeding because of my infertility, but at the end of the day, no dice. I still can't get my head around gestating some other woman's child with my husband. I guess my maternal instinct just ain't that strong.

But does it make me less brave? Less courageous? Less worthy of admiration? Because I'm happy to give up without grabbing the gold ring of success, the trophy of motherhood and family? Sometimes it feels this way.

Confusion reigns as sadness rains.

Clomid, Shlomid....

Okay.....sooooooo...................I can now say with all good sense and authority that I have experienced the miracle drug of Clomid. Funnily enough, this has come after about a zillion IVF cycles. I do work backwards, y'all.

Clomid is a demon drug. The first month I used it will go down in history as the Hunter Valley Wedding Shemozzle of 2009. In which, on my first ever cycle of clomid , I had a hugely embarrassing meltdown of epic proportions at a wedding in NSW, at which every single guest was either preggers, or had a large suite of bebe, with which to taunt moi, el infertilito.

Apart from the minor behavioural disorders, my months on Clomid have been relatively benign. This will be month no. 3 and month no. last. I said I'd do 3 Clomid cycles, and this is it, baby. I've done an early HPT, so know it didn't succeed. I do know that Clomid made me ovulate. In fact, these 3 months are the only times my test lines have been stronger than the control lines. Clearly, I have not been ovulating regularly in the past.

I am still completely, fucking unexplained.

Oi, Aussies!

The life of a DINK throws forth some mighty challenges, not least of which is just where to jet off to 3 times a year for some R, R and our other friend, R. (That would be rest, relaxation and recreation)

This time, we chose Vanuatu, which thanks to the Garish Fish Catcher, was about half price since the last time we perused this option (and settled then on Fiji). It's a pretty cool place, all in all. Fabbo food, beautiful beaches, chilled peeps and everyone speaks Anglais. In fact, this is partly because every damn tourist and business owner there is a damn Aussie. Wayyyyyy too many of those nasal tones greeting these old ears. And apparently, there are no taxes in Vanuatu, thusly leading to a veritable explosion of Aussie small-business people.

Being the socially conscious git that I am, I find this vaguely disquieting, almost akin to a past, colonial era when the white man spread his exploitative tentacles across the globe in search of gold, minerals and arable land. Notwithstanding the socialistic murmurings within my chest, we came to a few conclusions regarding this whole baby caper.

Stay tuned.

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.