Well hello ladies. And gents? Not sure if I have any gents reading this but suddenly aware I was generalising! :D
Anyway - howdy.
Well, autumn is most definitely here. The trees outside my office window have very few leaves left on them, the wind is kicking up and it's getting colder. Which isn't all bad, it means I can crack out the comfy jumpers. Also means evenings are really really dark which turns in to snuggle time on the sofa with hubs :) usually accompanied by a glass of wine and a boxset - but not always!
Which also means my mind turns to other things. Whilst we've not exactly abstained, we've not been 'actively' trying for a few months now as I settled in to my new job and worked through my probationary period. Didn't really want to turn round during that time and tell them I needed maternity leave! No matter how slim that chance was. So, I'm very soon to be going back to checking the diary and taking extra vitamins blah blah blah. We were told by the consultant to reduce stress (since physically, we're both absolutely fine - so they say anyway) and so no spreadsheets, no ovulation tests. Just going at it! Sorry.....
We have done everything we can to reduce the stress in our lives. We've moved house, I have a new job and generally we're just so so so much happier. So surely, since it had to be stress as it was nothing physical (2013 really was incredibly shitty. The end of 2012 wasn't great either), I should get knocked up pretty easily now - no? And then the fear creeps in. What if I still can't get pregnant. Even though I am in just the best place I've been in for years, both personally and professionally - what if it still doesn't happen? Will that crashing low of the monthly arrival be even worse now I've convinced myself our issues were psychological and everything is now tip-top, howdy-doody and fine? I realise, even for those 'normal' folk (apologies, can't think of a better word!) it takes a few months so even if we're are now fine I wouldn't expect things to happen for a month or two.
But what happens if, in six months' time, there is still no sign of anything? Or worse - what if I do get pregnant? I'll feel such a fraud for telling people about our journey and our IF diagnosis. Will people think I tricked them? Will they not understand just how hard all this has been? Will they think I over dramatized all of our pain and issues that we went through? Will they say "See, I told you you just had to relax and everything would be fine". And if they do, can I hit them with a wet fish?!
So. I actually find myself almost not wanting to start checking the diary again. Not wanting to start properly properly trying once more. I feel like I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. If it doesn't happen then IVF is on the horizon (my mum has very kindly offered to pay, we don't get it on the NHS where we live) and also possibly adoption (which hubby and I are both totally fine with). If it does happen then will I feel like I've let down my IF family on Twitter and that I'll no longer be welcome in the community that has supported me so much through the horrors so far.
A rock to the left of me, a hard place to the right, stuck in the middle with my own nightmares.
Wednesday 29 October 2014
Monday 13 October 2014
Wet, tired, cold - but still happy! Ish....
It's days like today when I absolutely and completely love my job.
The morning did not start well.... Hubby and I were awoken at 4am by a very loud dripping sound (it was raining incredibly heavily outside) and initially thought it was coming on to the window ledge - before we realised the noise was it actually hitting the, already wet, duvet on our bed. We were suddenly wide awake, running to get buckets and towels. Couldn't really call the landlord at 4am! So we made the best of it and I made the bed up in the spare room (as yet unmade, no visitors to stay so far since we moved in July) whilst hubby went into the loft to see if our stuff up there was soaking wet. All ok from initial investigations (further investigations this morning proved it, we just need to do some rearranging up there tonight and we'll put a bucket up there too) so we bedded down in the spare room, where for some reason the rain sounded louder than it had from our room.
Hubby took today off work at short notice (far more difficult for me to do that now since I've moved from the corporate work to education) and called the landlord at 9am. He was round within the hour but we're not sure when it's going to get fixed as roofers won't come out in the rain. Who knew?!
To add to this, my office is in a separate building to the main school and I get in this morning to find there is no heating. At all. In October. In Blightly. Brrrrrrrrrrr. So. I was rudely awoken at 4am and didn't really get back to sleep again, I was up at 6am to come to work and sit in a freezing cold office. I am grumpy. BUT. I am in an office by myself, if I flick to Twitter or FB every now and again to keep me awake so what? As long as I make darned sure I do what has to be done today and I do what I need to do this week I have every intention of leaving today as early as isn't rude. Would that have happened in my old job?! Hell no.
I am trusted to just get on with my job, I'm not checked up on. I'm not asked every few hours what I'm working on or what I have coming up. For someone like me, who works best independently when trusted to do so as I often take small breaks to ensure my concentration stays put, this is a dream. Having said all that, with the job I do it would be blindingly obvious pretty quickly if I wasn't doing something I should be or if something goes wrong! But I know that as long as I have tried my best, and it isn't a spectacular cock up, they'll understand a genuine mistake. Not that I really want to test that theory! But still, it's good to know.
So, I sit here in a freeeezing cold office with not much sleep and yes - I'm grumpy. But only tired-grumpy, not angry-at-the-world grumpy. And soon I will be going home, where it's warm and a good hug awaits me. As well as gin. There are far worse places to be in life.
The morning did not start well.... Hubby and I were awoken at 4am by a very loud dripping sound (it was raining incredibly heavily outside) and initially thought it was coming on to the window ledge - before we realised the noise was it actually hitting the, already wet, duvet on our bed. We were suddenly wide awake, running to get buckets and towels. Couldn't really call the landlord at 4am! So we made the best of it and I made the bed up in the spare room (as yet unmade, no visitors to stay so far since we moved in July) whilst hubby went into the loft to see if our stuff up there was soaking wet. All ok from initial investigations (further investigations this morning proved it, we just need to do some rearranging up there tonight and we'll put a bucket up there too) so we bedded down in the spare room, where for some reason the rain sounded louder than it had from our room.
Hubby took today off work at short notice (far more difficult for me to do that now since I've moved from the corporate work to education) and called the landlord at 9am. He was round within the hour but we're not sure when it's going to get fixed as roofers won't come out in the rain. Who knew?!
To add to this, my office is in a separate building to the main school and I get in this morning to find there is no heating. At all. In October. In Blightly. Brrrrrrrrrrr. So. I was rudely awoken at 4am and didn't really get back to sleep again, I was up at 6am to come to work and sit in a freezing cold office. I am grumpy. BUT. I am in an office by myself, if I flick to Twitter or FB every now and again to keep me awake so what? As long as I make darned sure I do what has to be done today and I do what I need to do this week I have every intention of leaving today as early as isn't rude. Would that have happened in my old job?! Hell no.
I am trusted to just get on with my job, I'm not checked up on. I'm not asked every few hours what I'm working on or what I have coming up. For someone like me, who works best independently when trusted to do so as I often take small breaks to ensure my concentration stays put, this is a dream. Having said all that, with the job I do it would be blindingly obvious pretty quickly if I wasn't doing something I should be or if something goes wrong! But I know that as long as I have tried my best, and it isn't a spectacular cock up, they'll understand a genuine mistake. Not that I really want to test that theory! But still, it's good to know.
So, I sit here in a freeeezing cold office with not much sleep and yes - I'm grumpy. But only tired-grumpy, not angry-at-the-world grumpy. And soon I will be going home, where it's warm and a good hug awaits me. As well as gin. There are far worse places to be in life.
Friday 3 October 2014
2014 so far: New Job, New House, New-found Happiness :)
Wow. I am knackered. Completely and utterly shattered. It's not been a particularly busy week. Yes, there have been a few evening activities but they've pretty much finished in time for me to get back home and to bed at what is about our usual hour.
The difference has been work. Which leads me quite nicely to the update I have been promising you for a while now! Just what has changed since we got our infertility diagnosis last December? Quite a lot really, is the short answer to that.
Physically we had both checked out fine. Which was a relief and a frustration in equal measure. Great, nothing's wrong! Crap, what do we do now if nothing's wrong? The other thing the consultant had mentioned when we saw her was the amount of stress in our lives. This lead to hubby and I doing some soul-searching over the Christmas break - neither of us was overly happy with our lot. Don't get me wrong, we're both alive and in good health! We have fantastic family and friends, jobs and a roof over our head. So I don't wish to sound ungrateful, there are plenty with less, but we weren't happy.
I had disliked work for a considerable amount of time. Over two years by the time we were having these discussions last Christmas. The sticking point was the maternity policy, it was insanely good (12 months on varied amounts of pay, but essentially no time at all on no pay at all - pretty much unheard of) and so I had been sticking it out as I would have been mad to leave whilst we were trying. But the more I thought about it the less that actually made sense, especially now. Chances are I couldn't get pregnant, so why was I sticking around for a reason that probably wasn't going to happen?! Worse still, if by some miracle we did conceive I'd have to stick it out there until I went on maternity leave. Not only that I'd then have to go back afterwards (at least for a minimum of six months so as not to forfeit the maternity money). The thought of which did not appeal in the slightest. And yes, I would always have had to go back to work - hubby earns a lot less than I do so conversations about me giving up work to look after kids are pretty much redundant.
The more I thought about it the more I realised I'd pretty much given myself an escape clause - a 'get out of jail' card if you will. I no longer had any reason to stay at the big corporate conglomerate whom I had grown to dislike. The question was, what on earth could I do instead?! I'd been there seven years and was doing something completely different before that, which meant that in my mid-30s I'd be looking to completely change career and for the second time.
My mother was a secondary school teacher by profession and, although she has now retired, she still shows an interest and has many contacts in the education world. I can't remember whether she showed me or I showed her to be honest, but there was an advert in the local paper for an Admissions Registrar for a private school not far from where we live. It seemed to play to an awful lot of my strengths and not only that, there was the cliché of wanting to do something 'worthwhile' rather than just make money for fat cats and spout marketing bollocks. Which, quite frankly, I'd got more than a little sick of. So I had nothing to lose, I applied for it. I didn't get anywhere with that one but I thought I'd found what it was that I wanted to do.
So that's what I kept looking for, that and similar roles in schools. How much of a relief would it be to work somewhere that was people-focused rather than profit-focused? Just what I wanted to do :) And after a few months I got somewhere, March 2014 I had an interview for an Admissions job at a junior school on the other side of London to where we live. Still, the commute was manageable and I had nothing to lose so off I went.
To cut an incredibly long story short I didn't get that job (turned out that not only was it term time only but also that the salary was therefore pro-rated accordingly!) but as part of the interview process for it I met the Headmistress of the senior school and her PA - and there was another role going at the school that seemed to be perfect for me. They had appointed but their chosen candidate had pulled out after initially accepting the offer so they were in the process of deciding whether to go through all the old applications again or whether to re-advertise. It very much felt like fate :)
Two interviews and a weekend of waiting later and the job was mine! Such a huge relief. I started in April and have never looked back. We also moved house in July to something far more manageable for the two of us (we'd initially rented quite a large house thinking we wouldn't be just two for long....) and hubby has also spent the year job hunting and is now on the verge of a completely different career that would not only up his salary but also be so much more fulfilling for him too.
So there we go. No, I'm still not pregnant but so much has changed so far this year that we are both in such a better place. I genuinely don't think I realised just how unhappy I was until things changed and I found out how happy I could be. I might be knackered, being fuelled solely by caffeine and biscuits, but I have a smile on my face.
There is more I want to write, but this blog post is long enough for now! I shall write more later to try and split this into two digestible (ish...) portions. Hopefully!
Back later xx
The difference has been work. Which leads me quite nicely to the update I have been promising you for a while now! Just what has changed since we got our infertility diagnosis last December? Quite a lot really, is the short answer to that.
Physically we had both checked out fine. Which was a relief and a frustration in equal measure. Great, nothing's wrong! Crap, what do we do now if nothing's wrong? The other thing the consultant had mentioned when we saw her was the amount of stress in our lives. This lead to hubby and I doing some soul-searching over the Christmas break - neither of us was overly happy with our lot. Don't get me wrong, we're both alive and in good health! We have fantastic family and friends, jobs and a roof over our head. So I don't wish to sound ungrateful, there are plenty with less, but we weren't happy.
I had disliked work for a considerable amount of time. Over two years by the time we were having these discussions last Christmas. The sticking point was the maternity policy, it was insanely good (12 months on varied amounts of pay, but essentially no time at all on no pay at all - pretty much unheard of) and so I had been sticking it out as I would have been mad to leave whilst we were trying. But the more I thought about it the less that actually made sense, especially now. Chances are I couldn't get pregnant, so why was I sticking around for a reason that probably wasn't going to happen?! Worse still, if by some miracle we did conceive I'd have to stick it out there until I went on maternity leave. Not only that I'd then have to go back afterwards (at least for a minimum of six months so as not to forfeit the maternity money). The thought of which did not appeal in the slightest. And yes, I would always have had to go back to work - hubby earns a lot less than I do so conversations about me giving up work to look after kids are pretty much redundant.
The more I thought about it the more I realised I'd pretty much given myself an escape clause - a 'get out of jail' card if you will. I no longer had any reason to stay at the big corporate conglomerate whom I had grown to dislike. The question was, what on earth could I do instead?! I'd been there seven years and was doing something completely different before that, which meant that in my mid-30s I'd be looking to completely change career and for the second time.
My mother was a secondary school teacher by profession and, although she has now retired, she still shows an interest and has many contacts in the education world. I can't remember whether she showed me or I showed her to be honest, but there was an advert in the local paper for an Admissions Registrar for a private school not far from where we live. It seemed to play to an awful lot of my strengths and not only that, there was the cliché of wanting to do something 'worthwhile' rather than just make money for fat cats and spout marketing bollocks. Which, quite frankly, I'd got more than a little sick of. So I had nothing to lose, I applied for it. I didn't get anywhere with that one but I thought I'd found what it was that I wanted to do.
So that's what I kept looking for, that and similar roles in schools. How much of a relief would it be to work somewhere that was people-focused rather than profit-focused? Just what I wanted to do :) And after a few months I got somewhere, March 2014 I had an interview for an Admissions job at a junior school on the other side of London to where we live. Still, the commute was manageable and I had nothing to lose so off I went.
To cut an incredibly long story short I didn't get that job (turned out that not only was it term time only but also that the salary was therefore pro-rated accordingly!) but as part of the interview process for it I met the Headmistress of the senior school and her PA - and there was another role going at the school that seemed to be perfect for me. They had appointed but their chosen candidate had pulled out after initially accepting the offer so they were in the process of deciding whether to go through all the old applications again or whether to re-advertise. It very much felt like fate :)
Two interviews and a weekend of waiting later and the job was mine! Such a huge relief. I started in April and have never looked back. We also moved house in July to something far more manageable for the two of us (we'd initially rented quite a large house thinking we wouldn't be just two for long....) and hubby has also spent the year job hunting and is now on the verge of a completely different career that would not only up his salary but also be so much more fulfilling for him too.
So there we go. No, I'm still not pregnant but so much has changed so far this year that we are both in such a better place. I genuinely don't think I realised just how unhappy I was until things changed and I found out how happy I could be. I might be knackered, being fuelled solely by caffeine and biscuits, but I have a smile on my face.
There is more I want to write, but this blog post is long enough for now! I shall write more later to try and split this into two digestible (ish...) portions. Hopefully!
Back later xx
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