New exciting venture – Beanwear

How is everybody? Life is pretty crazy with a 15 month old, finishing my book and working, but I’ve got a new venture that I’m currently fully immersed in.

I’ve spoken to quite a few parents about kids’ clothes, and come up with the following observations:

1) There is SO MUCH pink and blue out there, and not much gender-neutral stuff.

2) There are lots of frills

3) It’s almost impossible to find ‘boys” stuff on pink clothes

4) It’s really difficult to find kiddie sports clothes like basketball vest and shorts

5) where are all the clothes that fit over cloth nappies?

This lead me to the natural conclusion that there’s a massive gap in the market for someone to provide all of this, and so ‘beanwear’ has been born (website in development but http://www.beanwear.co.uk). I’ve decided to start with a range of bodysuits (babygro’s) in neutral colours that fit over cloth nappies. After that I’m hoping to branch out into other clothes and t-shirts, finally bringing out a range of sports clothes for toddlers.

I’ve been doing an unbelievable amount of research and have found a British factory that can provide what I need so it’s going to be supporting local industry. I’ve got my design done and am hoping that the first batch will be ready the end of October, with the official launch at the start of November. I know it sounds a long time away but there is so much to do before then, including getting a kickstarter campaign launched.

I’m really, really excited about this venture and hope it’s a success and am interested in your thoughts – what do you want to see in baby and toddler clothes that you can’t find, or is too expensive?

Happy weekend everyone and here’s a little shot of my guy enjoying our weekly shop. 🙂

Guernsey liberation 2015 – 70 years

Here are some photos from yesterday’s cavalcade in town. It was packed but ended up being a great day. Hope you enjoy the pics – feel free to share.

Liz

Hello people!

This last year has been completely crazy busy. I promised myself I’d keep up with my blog but with 101 other things to do it kept getting pushed aside as I try to juggle too many things at once. In a nutshell this is what’s happened in the past year:

1. I had a baby boy called Noah and he is wonderful. He’s turned one already! He’s funny, entertaining, cute and BALD! Wow motherhood really does change you.
2. After having Noah I got DVT (deep vein thrombosis) aka a massive blood clot the whole way down my left leg. It was diagnosed when Noah was two weeks old and I spent a week in hospital, the doctors worried a bit might break off and lodge in my lung or brain. Thankfully all is OK and a year after six months of anti coagulants I’m relatively clot free and all I have to do is wear a compression stocking all the time unless I’m sleeping.
3. 5 years after retiring from basketball I’m playing again in time for the Island Games in Jersey at the end of June (a big bi-annual sporting tournament). After two knee ops, another knee problem, pregnancy, birth and DVT I thought this unlikely at age 41 but here I am!
4. Work. Work is busy. Argh
5. MY BOOK! I’ve somehow managed to get my latest book ‘Jackboots & Jerrybags’ finished and launched yesterday, just in time for Guernsey’s 70^th anniversary of liberation from occupation. This has taken a lot of research, time and planning and I really hope people like it. If you’re interested in finding out more about what happened in Guernsey during World War 2, this should fill in the blanks. Click on the link to find the first three chapters Jackboots & Jerrybags sample. The book is  currently available on Kindle, with the paperback to follow in a few weeks and I’m interested in whether you’ve heard of the phrases ‘Jackboots’ or ‘Jerrybags’. Neither particularly complimentary!

That’s about it – again I’m hoping I’ll now have more time to keep my blog up-to-date so think of it as a belated 2015 resolution.

Love and hugs to all and Happy Mothers’ day to all US & Aussie people.

Abby, me and Noah at my sister’s wedding

Sneak Peek of new novel ‘Jackboots & Jerrybags’.

Things have been pretty crazy here for a while now and I owe a good update. In the meantime though, I’m working hard on my latest novel, Jackboots & Jerrybags. This novel is set in Guernsey in the Channel Islands during the German Occupation in World War 2. It follows the lives of Tomato grower Millie, Nurse Lou, school teacher Brenda and their friends. Read Chapter 1 here >>> Jackboots & Jerrybags chapter 1 <<<

I’ve spent an enormous time researching, and have thoroughly enjoyed every minute. All going well I’m hoping for a release date of September, although if I get time it may be earlier.

I hope you enjoy it, take care & stay warm

Liz

an eventful 2 weeks

After my secret trip to Denmark I came home to wait to see if the IVF had been successful. In the end 7 of my 13 follicles had fertilised, and I had managed to wait for a 5 day transfer rather than two, to increase the chance of it working. They transferred the two good blastocysts that remained after 5 days, hoping at least one of them took. We’d also happily reconciled ourselves to the possibility of twins.

It was my 40th birthday a few days before I was allowed to test, and I promised myself to just try to relax and enjoy the celebration without taking a pregnancy test which is easier said than done!

The wife and I had planned to go to France to see my parents for a couple of days and we met up in St Malo. Of course I couldn’t tell them anything about me maybe being pregnant so I had to try to invent an excuse as to why I wasn’t drinking to celebrate the big 4-0. My birthday slipped by fairly uneventfully but the day after I had a really upset stomach – not the best thing when you’re spending the day sightseeing and using public toilets!

After a couple of near misses toilet-wise, I managed to get back to the hotel early for the night having had a good reason for not drinking! I don’t mind feeling this way if I’m pregnant and it’s for a good reason but will not be happy if it’s just a bug I’ve caught.

When you go through the ‘two week wait’ it is a temptation to google every possible ‘symptom’ you may have. Upset stomach, sore scalp, cold… the list goes on. Google is great but NEVER use it when you have something wrong with you as it is scary!

We said farewell to my parents and came back home ready for my 40th celebrations on the Saturday night. What better place to have your 40th than in a castle? We’d booked out part of Castle Cornet and had hired caterers to do some food and drink. Because no one knew about my last trip the wife ordered some non-alcoholic wine and gave it to the waitresses with strict instructions to give it only to me so everyone thought I was on the booze – sneaky!

The morning of my party dawned, and tomorrow would be two weeks since I was implanted, and the day for testing. I had a sudden urge to take a pregnancy test, especially since a negative meant I could celebrate my birthday with champagne, and a positive test would mean our lives were about to change forever!

I went to the loo to test and brought it back to bed where we sat there nervously waiting, waiting, waiting.
‘Do you think it’ll be positive?’ I asked.
‘I do this time’ the response was and I prayed that it had worked this time and I wouldn’t need to wait another six months to go away again.
I think those three minutes were the longest of my life and I’d just looked away for a second when it flashed up

It worked and I’m pregnant!!!!!!!!!! wow. Of course that doesn’t mean it’ll ‘stick’, but I’ve passed the first hurdle in my hope to have a child.

We spent the rest of the day on cloud nine, happy to have my party to distract us as we weren’t able to tell anyone else the exciting news yet, talking about the ‘baby’ and everything ahead of us, both exciting and scary. The night went by quickly and I have to say I’ve never been happier not to be allowed to drink alcohol!

I’M PREGNANT!!!!

 

 

Ooooo thanks – did yours work?

deja vu IVF

We arrived home after our disappointment with the IVF to the inevitable questions ‘did it work’, ‘how did it go?’, ‘are you pregnant’?

Of course telling people that we didn’t even have a shot at getting pregnant because of a cracked syringe wasn’t the news we wanted to impart and it was difficult to have to share such frustrating news. Given my teaching commitments, the next time we could realistically plan to go to Denmark was likely to be in six months time which was also hard to cope with, given we weren’t sure if it was worth having a go at home in the meantime with all the faffing that is involved.

I still had a few more weeks before I had to be back at work, and resolved to enjoy the summer a bit, since there was some good weather for a change, and the week in Denmark had been a nice break away from life. Little did I know but the meds I had taken for my cycle were again to speed up the process, and I got my period after a 19 day cycle – a full 11 days less than my normal cycle, and 30 days less than my longest cycle!

I had a look at my calendar and got a jolt of hope when I realised I didn’t have to be at work for over a further month, and that there was nothing stopping me from having another attempt this cycle. I needed to start taking my meds straight away and book a last minute trip to Denmark, barely two weeks after I’d left, but it was possible! The other advantage this time is that no one expected us to go away so soon and I could keep this try a secret, the only downside when I looked at the calendar was that A didn’t have holiday, and would only be able to spend a few days with me, at the most.

We decided it was worth the hassle and possibility of Abs missing the insemination, and I immediately went about organising getting the medication, and booking the trip over to Denmark. Looking at dates, Abby could come over with me for the weekend and hopefully the egg retrieval, but had to go back home for Monday at work so would miss the implantation.

The next couple of weeks flew by as I took the meds to grow the follies, organised for the dogs to be minded and prayed this trip was more successful than the last. Thankfully we had sold a property we had which paid for all the travel, and IVF, otherwise we wouldn’t have the money to try again so soon.

The scan I had at day 8 of my cycle showed the eggs were growing well, but there were fewer than last time, and they weren’t as big. That didn’t matter in itself, but I inevitably worried they wouldn’t get enough to retrieve a sufficient number.

Day 13 rolled around, the day before we were due to leave for Denmark. The doctor at home counts each follicle and its size, and the clinic in Denmark then tells me the plan of action. Slightly unfortunately they didn’t think the follicles were quite big enough for retrieval yet, and wanted me to wait a few more days. We decided to still go to Denmark as I would be there when it was the right time, and be able to take the final injection in a more comfortable environment. It meant Abs might miss the whole process, but decided it was more important for her to be there for the rest of our potential baby’s life than the start of it.

 

We had a day or so to explore the city again, after having had a week wandering around a couple of weeks previously. Copenhagen in summer is wonderful. The weather was warm, the days long and sunny and the people friendly. We also brought Eric the bear over. He’s going to be the baby’s first toy and we wanted to take some pics of him where hopefully the baby begins his/her life and we can include in a photo album later.

Going back to the clinic barely two weeks after first going was a little strange, but at least we knew what to expect. We had a different doctor than the last time and I had another ultrasound to check out the growth of my follies.The news was promising in that there were at least 11 follicles (I had 16 last time) but they were now almost ready, and I could go in two days later for them to be extracted. We left the clinic more optimistic than last time, hoping this time it would mean a proper attempt at IVF.

The downside to having to travel to a different country for the procedure is that Abs had to leave the next day to go home while I stayed on an extra week or so, in a city where I didn’t know anyone, having far too much time to obsess over whether this effort would work. I was prepared with work to do but wasn’t sure realistically how much I would feel like doing. I caught the bus to the airport to say goodbye to my wife, going back to the hotel for a lonely day ahead, apprehensive about what was to come but also hopeful.

Two days later found me back in the chair, dignity on the floor with my clothes. One of the nurses came in and started chatting away to me which was slightly awkward since there was only one end she could see, and it wasn’t my face!

“Sorry we had to meet like this” she says, and I cringe, having to remind myself they are used to doing this day in, day out, and that her seeing that angle

This time I had a female doctor, as professional as all the others I’d had. I told them I wanted to try a 5 day transfer if possible as this means you get only the best embryos, kind of a ‘survival of the fittest’, and that I wanted two embies implanted to maximise my chances of success. Abs and I have discussed twins and even though we know it would be hard, that’s a price we’re willing to pay to get the family we want.

I once again have the local anaesthetic to try to numb some of the pain, before the doctor inserts a needle inside to locate the follicles. I am so nervous after what happened last time. Did the injection work? are the follicles big enough? Will the eggs fertilise? I hold my breath, trying to block out the pain of the procedure as one by one I see the follicles sucked out and put on a petri dish. It feels like someone is scraping my womb out and I don’t remember it being this painful last time, although knowing I only have to wait ten or so minutes makes it easier. In the end 13 follicles are retrieved, although the doctor immediately tells me two of them at least are probably too small and won’t fertilise. She cleans me up and I’m surprised at the amount of blood there is, not remembering nearly as much last time, and hoping that meant everything worked OK. I wait apprehensively while the doctor goes to check if the eggs are present, the vital bit that was missing last time.

‘Is everything OK?” I eventually ask, my eyes fixed on the doctor who is concentrating. She straightens and looks at me.
“Yes.” I release my breath, excited that now hopefully at least some of the eggs will fertilise, and we’ll finally get our first proper chance at IVF!

I go to lie down for half an hour or so before leaving to go back to the hotel, surprised at the amount of cramping I had, having none of it last time. I wanted to ring Abs earlier but unfortunately had dropped my phone in a pond the day before and it was now hardly working – what timing!!!!! I sent her an email telling her the good news and she nipped home at lunch for a skype so we could have a chat. 13 follicles and yes, there were eggs present! I have to ring the clinic in two days so they can determine how many eggs have fertilised, and whether I’m a candidate for the 5 day transfer and happier than I’ve been for weeks I catch the bus back to the hotel, lying down for the rest of the day as I dream about our ‘maybe baby’, praying with everything I am that this time it works.

Denmark here we come!

The most difficult thing about people know you’re trying for a baby is the constant ‘how’s it going?’ ‘you pregnant yet?’ questions which are very sweet but also difficult when things are taking longer than expected, and you don’t want to share TOO much about exactly what you’re doing!

We’d told family and close friends we were TTC, particularly as I didn’t want to spring an unexpected lesbian pregnancy on my very catholic parents, hoping they’d get over the shock before it actually happened. I hadn’t realised previously how frowned upon IVF is in the Catholic church, although I’m not surprised.

The Denmark trip was all booked and the injections were going pretty well. Abs was responsible where possible for the jabs in my butt or thigh, and we worked out if she numbed the site a bit with ice I didn’t feel anything. To be honest I didn’t need it but was getting just a little tired of jabs. I feel sorry for all the diabetics who need daily injections!

I’d had a final ultrasound at home (all of which I have to pay several hundred pounds for) which showed my 15 or so follicles were all about 16-18mm in diameter each which was perfect as they grow 2mm a day and are ideally between 20 & 22mm when you harvest them. I had now stopped taking the follicle growth hormone and was taking meds that stopped ovulation and kept those little follies there until the doctor pulled them out in a few days, giving me enough time to get to Copenhagen.

 

Everything sorted, dogs and cat minded off we went on our adventure! The last piece of the puzzle was my final injection, and possibly the most important. It is one jab that you need to take precisely 36 hours before you go in for your appointment. The reason for this is that this medication forces your body to ovulate, releasing all those eggs and follicles which the doctor then removes and fertilises. As it happened 36 hours before my appointment was the exact time we landed in Copenhagen, so I was forced to do the injection myself in my thigh. This was easier said than done because I was now showing signs of bloating because of all the ripe follies in my belly, as well as the fact there was blue lighting in the toilet to stop drug addicts!

I gamely pulled out the long, thin needle and prepared it for injection when I noticed….

 

IT HAD CRACKED!!!

 

how is this possible? it was in my carry on bag, in a special pouch and protected from everything else. What had happened? I checked it wasn’t fully broken just cracked and injected what I could, although I did notice some of the liquid escaped through the broken vial, hoping that enough got into my system to work.

 

We spent a nice next day in the lovely city of Copenhagen, getting excited about the following day where we were going to start the IVF process and talking about ‘our kid’ and whether it would work. We’ve always spoken in generalities about ‘our kid wouldn’t be allowed to do this’ or ‘we’d do this with our children’, but it was never a definite plan. Until now.

Morning came and with it the nerves, and we decided to catch a taxi to the clinic to save us getting lost in a foreign city. We arrived at a nondescript building in a residential part of town next to a shopping centre. I took a deep breath and entered the doors, catching the lift up to the fourth floor.

Going through the heavy wooden doors we went to the reception and ‘checked in’, taking a seat in the uncomfortable plastic chairs they always have in such places. The whole place appears very clean and I wipe my hands on my jeans to try to calm myself down. Abs sits next to me calmly, neither of us talking as we look pointlessly at the magazines there to read, all of them in Danish.

After about twenty minutes we’re called through by the doctor, a smiling bespectacled man in a white lab coat who introduces himself, speaking perfect English. Apparently quite a proportion of the clientele of the clinic are from the UK so they’re accustomed to having to make allowances for our lack of Danish. He takes us into a treatment room with chair and ultrasound, a lab room through an open door. I’m ushered to the corner to disrobe and climb in the chair, now used to feeling stripped of my dignity as I lie there at the doctor’s mercy and praying everything’s worked and there are a good number of eggs to retrieve.

The doctor has a nurse with him and Abs sits next to me holding my hand as they work in silence. I’m given a local anaesthetic to slightly numb the area and we watch in fascination as the probe locates the follicles in my uterus, the doctor sucking them out one by one and putting them in a dish. I can still feel what’s happening, and the sucking is painful deep inside, almost like bad period pain. After about ten minutes the procedure is finished and the doctor has sucked out sixteen follicles. He goes to study them in the dish and shakes his head, and he and the nurse have a brief conversation in Danish. Abs and I share a glance and dread overwhelms me as I realise something isn’t quite wrong.

‘Did you take the last medication 36 hours ago?’ He asks me.
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘But it was a bit cracked. Hasn’t it worked?’ He doesn’t answer for a minute as he has another look and calls the nurse over to check.
‘They’re not there.’ He says
‘What aren’t?’
‘The eggs. There are no eggs to fertilise. The injection didn’t work.’ A sick feeling passes through me and Abs squeezes my hand tightly. That cracked syringe. I didn’t get enough of the medication to induce fertilisation.
‘I’ve never seen this happen in 30 years of practice,’ the doctor continues to speak while the numbness takes hold and my mind tries to process the implications of this.
‘Will they be there if we try tomorrow?’ I ask hopefully.
‘No, you’ll need to wait for another cycle and do the whole thing again.’ I sag against Abs, the thought of having to do all the meds, get time off work, come to Denmark for a week… too much to process.
‘We’ll take you out to rest in the bed but I’m afraid you’ll need to pay the full amount today because we started the process.’ What? even though they didn’t do the fertilisation we still have to pay £2,000? I don’t want to argue the point just yet but it seems a little unfair to me. Still, at this point there’s nothing to do but follow the doctor out and go to one of five beds, each separated by a curtain. Abs helps me up and I lie there, my brain trying to sort through my emotions as we hold each other, the rest of the week in Copenhagen suddenly dawning very empty and bleak.

We lie for about half an hour until the nurse comes to help us with the next steps. We pay for the ‘package’ IVF deal where we effectively get 3 attempts for the price of 2 since we know we want to try again. The doctor comes back to talk for us one last time saying that all other procedures for the day worked fine, sympathy for us written all over his face. Just what I wanted to know right then and there, no one else has these random things happen to them.

Abs and I go back to the hotel and start planning ahead for our next try. We decide rather than come home early we’ll enjoy a week in Copenhagen in summer where the sun is shining and I can finally have a (very expensive) drink after over six months of no alcohol. It’s a bittersweet drink but by the end of the day we’re more determined than ever that this is just a minor setback, and we need to focus on the fact I was able to get 16 good sized follicles to grow.

We may not have been successful this time but you can bet we’ll be back and next time if the syringe even looks remotely damaged I’m going to go and demand another one!

things don’t always go to plan…

After two failed attempts we investigated the IVF route in more detail but in the meantime we thought to try for a third attempt at home while we were waiting. IVF is NOT cheap, but it obviously has far greater success than an at-home insemination. I was also unsure about how things would continue to go given my polycystic ovaries so we decided to take the plunge.

For reasons I’ve mentioned before, we opted for a Danish clinic. To summarise, our main reasons were:

1) Cheaper (I mean much, much cheaper, probably 1/3 of the price)

2) could choose our donor, including an anonymous donor if we wanted

3) no waiting list

4) quite fancied a trip to Copenhagen!

 

I sent off a query and had a telephone conversation with one of the doctors in the clinic to establish my reasons for wanting to pursue this route, my age, history, results of blood tests etc. The conversation was detailed and I was re-assured that the clinic was indeed professional and used to doing this with non Danish nationals. There are two protocols to choose from with IVF, the long protocol where you are given medication to completely stop your cycle and then further medication to dictate when you ovulate, when your cycles starts etc. This is a lot more invasive and interfering with your body, as well as taking a lot longer for the whole process. The other option that we decided on was a ‘short protocol’ which piggy backs your existing cycle, taking medication to stop ovulating and then pinpointing the exact time you want to ovulate so as to harvest the eggs at the appropriate time, particularly as I was going to have to travel to Denmark to do it.

After our telephone conversation the doctor emailed a prescription for the necessary meds which I then took to my doctor over here to get them to write a local script for me. This is where our first good bit of luck in the process came about. IVF medication is NOT cheap – in the region of £1,000 for a cycle. ON TOP OF the cost of the procedure which in the UK can vary from £6k – £9k. (The clinic we were going to did a package deal where you could have one go for £2k or three for just over £4k, but we didn’t need to decide just yet.)

While we were starting the IVF process we ordered one final batch of swimmers for a last try at home. We ordered them, after waiting a few days they finally arrived as I waited, and waited, and waited for the right time to inseminate using my charting. The time never came and as the deadline for using the swimmers came and went with them still in the tank we realised that my body was not going to co operate this month, and that we’d just wasted £800 and two vials of swimmers for absolutely nothing. It was gutting to have to put those guys in the bin, the most expensive 1ml of liquid gold I’ve ever bought, and the biggest waste of money on any purchase I’d ever made.

We tried to push the money out of our minds and focus on the IVF, thankful that we’d managed to sell a property we’d owned which made us enough money to pay for the process and make the loss of £800 a bit easier to cope with.

I went to my doctor over here to get the prescription for the IVF drugs which had come through, waiting for my cycle to start with anticipation. I dropped it off at the pharmacy where of course they told me only a couple of pharmacies on the island stocked what I needed and of course they weren’t one of them. They had to ring around and finally found where I was supposed to go, but it had to be ordered in and would be a few days, so I’m glad I prepared early!

Three days later I went to pick up the scripts, expecting quite a hefty bill for the three medications. I waited, biting my lip and wincing in advance when the receptionist had a look at the label.

“That’ll be £9.60 all up.” I wasn’t going to argue with that, and escaped as quickly as possible in case they realised they’d made a mistake, and realising we’d just accounted for the money we’d lost, deciding there are swings and roundabouts in this process and that a baby is worth much more than that anyway.

Getting home I checked the meds and timetable for when I’d have to take them, discovering unfortunately they were all injections with needles. Word of advice, if you are squeamish about needles IVF may not be for you!

I needed to have a ultrasound and start taking the first medication (effectively a follicle growth hormone) just after the start of a new cycle, as the aim was to get a decent number of follicles to grow to a big enough size to be able to harvest and fertilise, keeping in mind usually with a natural cycle you have one or two maximum. If you can start with 10 or so follicles to fertilise rather than one, you have a much better chance of getting pregnant!

My cycle started and I had my baseline ultrasound, starting to take the meds on the second day, planning another three ultrasounds in the next week to monitor the size and number of follicles that were growing. The risk with the medication I was taking (Gonal F) is that it’s possible to grow too many follicles to too great a size, particularly if you suffer from PCOS as I do, hence the regular monitoring.

A second ultrasound showed around fifteen follicles growing nicely – 15!!! that was great news, imagine if they could try to fertilise 15 follicles! I bounced out of the ultrasound, starting to think about booking our last minute trip to Denmark in less than two weeks now we were able to pinpoint the days of the cycle we needed to be there. Because of the weirdness with my previous cycle, the dates had moved back a bit but I was lucky enough not to have to teach during the week I needed off, and A and I went about excitedly booking for what we hoped was our ‘baby making holiday’, praying I might come back pregnant.

 

 

 

 

 

The long wait

As I’ve mentioned before, the two weeks after trying for a baby before taking a pregnancy test are about the longest two weeks I’ve ever experienced, even worse than waiting for exam results.

I didn’t really expect our second try to be successful because I’d been so sick with a cold when we tried. Despite the evidence that says this shouldn’t affect getting pregnant, I couldn’t help but imagine my body shutting itself down for all but the most important bodily functions. Still, I endured the two weeks anyway, trying to keep positive in case it was successful. It was more difficult this time as I wasn’t able to chart my temperature or other symptoms since all I felt was sick with a cold.

In the meantime to prepare for the worst, we started looking at IVF clinics as this was the route we were going down should the ‘at home’ method not work. I was already seeing the specialist on the island who was giving me blood tests to determine if I was actually ovulating, a necessity since it’s possible I have polycystic ovaries which can affect your attempts to get pregnant. The test results all indicated I was ovulating which is a positive sign and mean that in theory I can get pregnant, if we get the timing right. In the meantime we continued to search across Europe for IVF clinics, comparing prices and trying to determine through reviews which ones we thought were most likely to be pro lesbian and suitable for us.

It felt good to be doing something pro-active, and although the clinic have an affiliation with a UK clinic, it proved to be extremely expensive, we had no choice in the donor we wanted, and there was likely to be a significant waiting list. Not content with having to go with that option, we managed to narrow our choices down to a clinic in Spain or one of three clinics in Denmark, should the impending pregnancy test be unsuccessful.

The day of the pregnancy test came around and I was still sick. We’d bought a couple of digital monitors to test on first thing in the morning and I dutifully POAS (pissed on a stick), taking it up to Abs, both of us settling in nervously to wait. The seconds ticked by with nothing happening while the stick was ‘thinking’ and analysing the results. We held our breaths, huddled together under the covers until letting out a deep breath as the ‘not pregnant’ flashed up again.

“Thought so.” I said, disappointment evident, despite our realistic expectations.
“IVF?” Abs said.
“Let’s go for it.” And there it was – our best chance now for getting pregnant was going to lie with us going on an adventure to Denmark and hoping they had more success than we’d had in our home attempts. All we needed to do was find thousands of pounds, hope my cycle would regulate itself, and be able to organise at least a week off work in the middle of teaching season! Oh well, we never thought this road would be easy…