Missing what I never had…

There’s something very strange about infertility. Well, actually, there’s a helluva lot that’s very strange about infertility, but, today, I wanted to talk to you guys about just one thing in particular. I’m going to warn you right now about the potential for over-share, revealing a side of your parents that you probably don’t want to think about, and possibly letting a few secrets out of the bag…and it’s a long ranting post…so you’ve been warned – read on at your own peril!!!

For me, I think today’s topic is one of the hardest parts of dealing with IF and I’ve no idea if anyone else experiencing it agrees – but as an infertile, you suddenly become obsessed with the things you can’t have with regards conception, pregnancy and having children. They’re not things I thought about previously, but all of a sudden, it seems bloody unfair that I can’t have them. They’re things that a fertile couple probably never even consider, but now we’ve been officially ‘Infertile’ for a year, they’re starting to really piss me off.

I don’t think this feeling is something a fertile would understand. Well ok, they might understand it, but not with regards having children. They may experience these feelings about other activities or dreams, depending on their situation or what challenges they’re facing. Maybe amputees have similar feelings, or people struggling with disabilities. But all of a sudden, I feel myself mourning the loss of the most peculiar things, things I never even thought about before never mind thinking about whether they were important to me, things only an infertile would miss.

Let me try and explain with the help of one or two examples…

Let me set the scene…it’s a gorgeous Saturday morning, your mom’s had a stressful week and wants to get out a bit, do something different. So we hop in the 4×4 and head up the west coast – we’ve never been to Yzerfontein, so let’s go check this place out. Drive round the lovely little village, playing ‘imagine if we owned that house’. A super lunch in a small restaurant over-looking the beach, some wine for your mom, seafood…lovely. Lunch over, it’s walk on the beach time. We walk along the ‘town’ part of the beach, round some rocks and then there’s just 16 miles of stunning white sand, surf crashing on the beach, slight spray/mist rolling across the sand, and after we pass the beach-front restaurant hosting a wedding this fine summer’s day, it’s just us the sea and the sand. We stroll on for a while chatting and laughing till we cannot see another soul on the beach…time for some naughty nookie – awesome!! Now, before you get worried, I’m not going into specifics, but lets say “…a little while later…” we’re strolling back along this fabulous stretch of beach, heading back to the car with dozy expressions and an awful lot of sand in places sand really doesn’t belong. And now here’s the crunch…instead of waltzing along happy as a pig in shit (like most guys would be in the same situation), I find myself thinking about how awesome it would be if we could conceive our children in just such a way. How incredible to know your kid was conceived on a special day, a romantic afternoon, a memorable location. It’s not something you’d necessarily tell anyone, but in the recesses of your own mind you’d know that your child was conceived on the perfect afternoon, in a perfect venue, in a sexy and erotic manner. How cool to know your kid was conceived on a beach in the throes of passion with the love of your life…NO…NOT US…If we want our kids conceived on a beach, or some other exotic location, it’s gonna look like the set from one of those  ’plague’ or ‘outbreak’ type movies, you know the kind, big clear plastic sterile cube with the filtered air-conditioning and the doors that make that shhhwwooop sounds as they open and close, anyone entering and leaving taking the disinfectant shower. The scenario from then on depends on whether we’re ‘exceptionally lucky’, just plain ‘lucky’ or ‘unlucky’.

If we’re ‘exceptionally lucky’ your mom on a stretcher in the plastic cube while the FS and whoever else needs to be there is leant over her nether regions, with the mother of all syringes filled with my sperm…If we’re ‘unlucky’ your mom is on the same stretcher in the plastic cube while the FS and whoever else needs to be there is leant over her nether regions, with the mother of all syringes filled with someone else’s sperm (thanks Zorro)…If we’re just plain ‘lucky’ your mom isn’t even in the sterile cube and some nerdy lab tech is leaning over the petri dish trying to insert a single sperm cell into your mom’s egg…all while the waves crash unnoticed on the pristine beach just outside the plastic walls…

I don’t know about you, but this seems highly unlikely – not sure FS’s and lab tech’s do home visits, let alone ‘exotic location visits’ and unless we win gazillions on the lottery, is probably likely to be a little outside our budget (hell, at this stage, we’re not sure how much ‘traditional ART is within our budget!!).

But it’s not fair…I have now decided that I want my children conceived on a spotless beach, or under a palm tree in an exotic location or in a secluded valley near a plunging waterfall with a lovely rock pool. Not some pokey lab in Pinelands!! And if I wasn’t infertile, we could do it. But I am, so we can’t, and I’m not happy about it!!

Fertiles, even though they’ve probably never thought of it, can do this sort of thing. They can walk along the beach after a fantastic naughty nookie session and wonder if that’s the one that’s gonna result in their first child. Not us…no…with every step back towards the car, the more depressed I feel because that daydream is denied us.

Another example…I want your mom’s pregnancy to be 9 months of joy and blissful ignorance…worried about nothing more serious than stretch marks and whether we’re talking to the little bean enough, playing Mozart and Beethoven to her swollen abdomen, oblivious to any fear or apprehension, laying on the grass with my head on her thighs watching to see an elbow or foot deforming her bump …but you know that’s not how it’s gonna be. Infertiles never lose their fear, never miss the chance to worry about the next milestone, the next pass/fail point, never get to waltz through 9 months with no worries or anxiety…because we’ve seen the statistics, we’ve read about everything that can go wrong, we will never take our child’s successful emergence into the world for granted – we’ll still be worrying at your 21st birthday…because we’ve lost our naivety…it’s been ripped from us the moment we got labelled as ‘Infertile’ and found ourselves spending our time scouring the web reading anything we can about conception, pregnancy, birth, sitting in waiting rooms to meet with specialists, joining forums and talking to other infertiles and reading their stories/issues/challenges, having blood tests, dildo cams, blood tests, physical examinations, blood test, semen analysis, blood tests, billions of injections and some more bloody blood tests. There’s no naïve wonder at the miracle of creation – we know better. We know that it takes years of research, unstinting dedication, heartache, financial burden, science, tests and emotional dedication – AND THAT’S JUST THE CONCEPTION!!!!!

We’re jealous of the spontaneity of fertiles…they can have sex whenever they want without all the stress and mental baggage that starts to go with it the longer you’re infertile….we want pregnancy to come as a great big surprise, a shot out of the blue, a bolt out the dark…not something in the calendar that we’ve written in in pencil, because after the last failures we’ve learnt that writing it in in pen means you’re reminded of the failure for the rest of the month…we want the dream discovery…mom’s wondering around the shops on a Saturday morning, it occurs to her that her period’s late, wait a minute…it’s pretty damn late…hhmmm…maybe she should pop in to Clicks and get a pregnancy test kit…get home, pee on the stick…shock horror..two lines…spontaneous excitement…tells dad…shock on his face for 10 seconds, he blinks, and starts jumping up and down…we’re gonna have a baby…how fucking awesome is that…better start saving for university fees…no, not infertiles…it’s more a case of 23 HPT’s, 4 Beta’s and a scan before we can jump for joy – and then don’t jump too much…there’s still 8 and a half months to get through yet…and that’s just sad and spectacularly unfair.

We want to be able to investigate schools and nurseries, baby clothes and pushchairs, car seats and bottle sterilisers without the overwhelming feeling that we’re jinxing the hell out of things. We want to be excited at seeing a pregnant women and her proud doting husband, knowing that soon that’ll be us. We want to cuddle our god-children without worrying if everyone around us is nervous that we’re gonna flip out and try make a run for the border with their kid, or spontaneously burst into tears and create a scene in the restaurant because there’s a family with twins at the next table. We want to be able to look at other peoples kids without that part of us that sits off to one side, watching ourselves, waiting for the spike of jealousy or sadness that we know is coming. We appreciate the people who are giving us our space while still giving us support, but hate the fact that they feel they need to handle us with kid gloves. We want your sympathy and understanding but we wish there wasn’t a reason for you to have to give us sympathy and understanding…so we don’t want your damn sympathy dammit.

And I don’t want to feel like everyone we’ve told is looking at me on the sly, trying to find an external indication of my failure as a man. The feeling that whenever they are looking at me, that they’re wondering if I’m man enough to satisfy my wife…cos lets be honest…he can’t get her pregnant – there must be something majorly wrong in the trouser department.

And it’s all these emotions and thoughts and feelings that make being infertile so fucking impossible…and god help our friends and families, because we’re so bloody conflicted and emotional and confused and sad and angry and depressed and hopeful that they don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of saying a single thing to us without the probability of upsetting us immensely – so it’s no picnic for them either.

But for me, basically, I suppose I can sum it all up by saying that I want to be ‘not infertile’ again, although, I suppose, strictly speaking, I was never ‘not infertile’, so I’m wanting something I never had…

Minor Admin post…

We interrupt this news bulletin…ah blog…for some minor administration news.

Decided to change the appearance of the blog – although I was happy with the theme I was using, I found it wasn’t great at highlighting hyperlinks within the text and when I stuck the calender in the side bar (to make navigating to previous posts easier), you couldn’t see any difference betweens dates with a post and dates without. So, a change of appearance…hope it’s still readable – text seems pretty small…would welcome your comments (and as I didn’t design the theme, I’m in no way precious about the feedback)…

Regular programming will now recommence…

What a difference a day makes…

So it’s your mom’s birthday tomorrow.

For most people that’s a happy time, something to look forward to, to be excited about…but this is so not the case when you’re battling IF!

Nope, for those trying to have a baby and failing dismally, birthdays (and any other time-based milestone for that matter) is just another reminder of how long you’ve been trying, how quickly time is passing and how soon your child-bearing days will be over. This may sound a little dramatic, but it’s true…every birthday, wedding anniversary, Christmas, etc is just another reminder of a failed milestone receding in the rear-view mirror.

It’s funny (in a sadly non-humorous way) how your mom’s birthday has been playing on my mind over the last couple of weeks. There are a good number of reasons for this. The first, and most obvious one, is the feeling that we’re getting old – not old in the ‘grey hair and false teeth’ kinda way, just old for starting a family. We were out to dinner a couple days ago when someone at the table (I think it was Nan) mentioned that this year I would be turning 37. This really hammered me like never before…I’ve never been worried about my age (a result of looking 10 years younger than I am – well, that used to be the case anyway)…but I sat there in the restaurant doing the maths in my head…37 this year, at least another 8 months on this injection protocol before we hope to see sperm…and that’s the very earliest we can even hope to be actually trying to fall pregnant…9 months of pregnancy…OMG I’m going to be knocking on 60 at my kids 21st birthday party…I’m gonna be well past 60 for my second kids 21st birthday party!! And that’s if things go well!!!!!

And these thoughts have been going on over and over and over again in my mind ever since. Then, along comes your mom’s birthday. She’s turning 35 this year. The second reason this birthday is such a big deal for us is that, for some reason, “35″ is like this huge big milestone in the female reproductive world…all the stats seem to focus on how things become X percentage harder, Y percentage less likely and Z percentage less successful after the age of 35…and your mom’s got these stats memorised, I’m sure…

The problem with these sorts of statistics is that they’re pretty rigidly interpreted by the mind…to quote some stats from a website found after 2 minutes searching on the web (so I’m not vouching for them, their accuracy or the website in any way): “Women under 25 years of age have a 96% chance of getting pregnant within a year of trying. Women age 26-34 have an 86% chance, and women 36-44 have a 78% chance of getting pregnant within a year.”

You look at these and other stats and your mind takes this in and translates it to something like …today, with a normal man, your mom has a 25% chance of getting pregnant if she has unprotected sex and it’s her ovulation day…tomorrow…she’s 35 years old…so exactly same scenario, but she’s a day older and therefore sex with that same normal man, will only give her a 18% chance…JEEZ!!! I know this isn’t the reality of how it works (or that these stats are in any way the reality of the situation), but it’s the way our minds process statistics…unless we stop and think it through…but by then it’s too late, you’re already stressed and worried and you can’t get these figures out of your mind – statistics have their own ‘first impressions’ and they’re impossible to forget no matter how you try and rationalise them away.

But the worst thing about your mom’s approaching birthday is the birthday present issue. I’ve always played a game with your mom for her birthday’s and Christmas’s…I ask her what she wants for the special day and then take it as a personal challenge to get her something different, something she hasn’t thought of but that she needs/wants/likes/loves just as much as those things she did think of. I always feel extra happy/satisfied when I succeed in this game. Of course, your mom cottoned on to the fact that I never buy her what she says she wanted, so has become less likely to give me ideas or tell me what she wants…but I keep trying. The problem is, this year for her birthday, for the first time in 14 years, I’m stumped…

The reason I’m stumped, is that every time I think of her birthday and getting her a present (or whenever anyone else asks me what she wants for her birthday), the only thought I have is that there’s only really one thing in the whole world she wants…and I can’t give it to her.

And this sucks BIG TIME and I can’t get this thought out of my head and it’s driving me nuts. Dealing with the guilt of being the partner ‘responsible’ for the IF is bad enough on your average day…but now it’s ruining her Christmas’s and birthday’s too…and it’s all my fault.

And there’s this big part of me that looks at these stats on the rapid decline after 35 and wonders if I’ve been so selfish that I’ve ruined your mom’s chances of having babies…the delay in trying to get my body to work so that we can have my biological children is exactly the reason your mom is crossing the dreaded 35 year barrier childless. If I hadn’t been so selfish last year, we could easily have had 3, 4 or 5 IUI’s with donor sperm and your mom could be happily knocked up already. Or even if they didn’t work, there would have been enough time for an IVF cycle or 2 with donor sperm. They would have increased the chances even more that she would be celebrating this birthday with a lovely gorgeous big smooth tummy with a sticking out belly button and a baby shower in the near future…and then this birthday would be the most wonderous occasion ever, her best birthday ever, rather than a nasty sneeky bastard of a stalker that’s caught up with us while we weren’t looking.

But I need to change my attitude, because nothing’s gonna ruin her birthday more than a miserable depressed git of a husband…I need to buck up and sort myself out, because the only real present I may be able to give her this year, is the knowledge that I love her more than anything, that I will do anything for her and her happiness, and that she is and will always be my Raisin.

HELP…Manhood missing!!!

Well…it’s not really missing…but just gone on vacation (I hope!!).

Let me explain…I’ve just been sitting here at the PC twiddling my thumbs and growing more annoyed with the fact that your mom isn’t home from work yet…and the lovely dinner I’ve cooked is going to be spoiled…and I need to break the news to her that her cocktail dress somehow found its way into the washing and she’s gonna need to lose another 20kg’s before it’ll fit again..and I’ve tidied the house in preparation for the cleaners coming tomorrow…and why can’t your mother put her things away instead of leaving them all over the house…and I really must go to the shops and get some food in this house…and I’ve turned the temperature down on the oven 3 times now to try and prevent my world famous goulash from drying out and going all horrible – more likely to look like biltong than goulash if she doesn’t get home soon!!

Then I stop and replay what I’ve just been thinking…OMG…I’ve turned into a nagging housewife!! Jeez, next I’ll be complaining of a headache to get out of sex…and complaining that my housekeeping allowance is too stingy and that she snores…oh wait…I do complain that she snores…aarrghhhh.

Your poor mom is so busy at work…I feel like I should have her pipe and slippers ready at the door when she gets home and offer her a massage or a foot rub while she reads the paper after dinner. Maybe I should pack her a nice lunch and slip little love letters into it – oh no, damn, she’s discovered the cafeteria at work is fantastic. hmmm…now what.

The net result…I’ve started looking for a ‘proper’ job again. I can’t handle the guilt any longer – she’s so stressed and over-worked – unlike me. I’ve been working from home for over 3 years now, the last two of then all alone. I’ve become the house-husband which is only fair…I’m not the one getting out of bed just after 5am every morning…nope, not me…I kiss your mom goodbye and she heads off, and most mornings, I roll over and snooze till 07:15…then it’s a leisurely start, quick check of the emails, breakfast on the patio (unless there’s actually some work for me to do), turn the pool pump on, wander round the garden, have a quick dip in the pool if it seems like it’s gonna be a hot one…unpack the dishwasher, put on a load or two of laundry, etc etc etc.

Work from the UK (my main source of work) is intermittent to say the least…two months with nothing to do, then work to keep me busy all the hours – although in truth, the late nighter’s tend to be a result of an approaching deadline and my inability to do the work until the deadline is nearly apon me – need the pressure to do my best work. So, there are long periods with nothing to do except DIY and housework, swimming and reading, a bit of carving in the workshop and some desktop support for Pops and a few others…hardly stressing me out or stretching me mentally.

And it’s now got to the point where it just doesn’t seem right. Yeh, ok, your mom loves her work, but still…she’s gonna go postal if things don’t settle down, and me swanning around like Lord Muck is not helping, of this I’m sure.

Besides which, it gets lonely working from home. Email communication isn’t exactly social. So, that’s that…mom’s spruced up my CV, and I’ve been online today, applying for anything even vaguely in my line. The problem with the situation is that the work from the UK is pretty profitable…and it’s hard to get pumped up about the idea of going to an office job 5 days a week for the same money as my current setup…who, given the choice would join the rat-race when they could potter around at home, working in the nude, swimming and faffing, with no stress to speak of?

Problem is, I HATE job hunting…it’s the absolute worst thing in the world…I’d rather have surgery, or be run over by a car, or be beaten by a plague of WWF wrestlers (I’m not sure what the correct collective noun for wrestlers is, but this’ll do for now), or have my eyes poked with a sharp stick, or be subjected to Chinese water torture, or watch The Sound of Music or listen to Abba…actually, wait…maybe not those last two.

But that’s what I’m gonna do…that’s it. It’s time to get out of this house and meet people, work in the outside world, commute, do lunch, stress, wear clothes every day, climb the corporate ladder…and do all this for a number of reasons:

1. So your mom doesn’t feel so hard-done-by;
2. To get to meet people and stop feeling so lonely;
3. To start using my brain on a slightly more regular basis;
4. Get a secure income (which will make budgeting things like holidays and medication and IVF so much easier); and
5. So I can regain my manhood and stop obsessing about the laundry and the dishes and the BLOODY DINNER THAT I SLAVED OVER A HOT STOVE MAKING AND THAT’S NOW TOTALLY BLOODY RUINED AND ONLY FIT FOR THE DOGS (if we had any)…

Hello Strangers…

It’s been almost a month since I last chatted to you guys…been a crazy time with me getting absolutely zero privacy to sit in front of the pc and talk to you two.

You see, I came to the conclusion that your mom has had the roughest year ever and that what she really needed was some good quality time with her family, to help lift her spirits. So we flew all her family down to Cape Town to be with us over the Christmas period. Pops and Granny (your mom’s parent’s in case you’ve forgotten the naming conventions) along with your mom’s half-sister arrived the week before Christmas, with her half brother, stepmom and stepmom’s boyfriend arriving on Christmas eve. As you can imagine, it was a pretty hectic houseful, with bodies/suitcases/clothes seemingly all over the place. Christmas was at our place and was the first time ever that all the members of both families were together – it was loud, funny and awesome. And, maybe most importantly, your mom seemed to enjoy almost every minute of it. So, mission accomplished…she seemed more happier and upbeat after a few days rest and time with her family than she has since early January 2009 – the point at which she realised she wanted you guys in our lives, and confronted the reality that it wasn’t going to be a straight-forward process.

The side-effect of all of this was people staying in the study, which meant my blog time was non-existent. It’s funny, we’ve told all of them about the fact that we’re trying to have kids, but I still didn’t want any of the family ‘catching’ me on the Fertilicare forum, or reading IF blogs, or, shock horror worst of the worst, actually typing a post to you guys. I suppose I’m not sure they’d understand how important being able to talk to you guys even before you’re here in the flesh has become to me. I don’t think any of your mom’s family (with the possible exception of her stepmom who is an awesome woman) has any concept of the hell, the heartache and the all-consuming journey we have undertaken…and I’m not sure I’m ready to bare my soul entirely to them just yet.

So, no pc time, and because your mom had to work a few of the days during the time everyone was here, I couldn’t even get any ‘me alone’ time…I don’t think I fully realised how quiet and settled my life is  until we had all these people in the house. I work from home alone, so am used to 5 days a week of no-one to talk to for 8 or 9 hours a day…what a difference having your mom’s family around…my ears felt abused within a few hours, and by the end of the first week, my hearing had practically shut down!!

I’ve spent the last few days with a large part of me looking forward to this morning – we took the last of the family to the airport last night. I woke up this morning and was overwhelmed with the silence – even the guinea-fowl who roost next door seemed to be holding their breath. I’d been fantasising for days now about waking up, walking around the house naked, sitting in front of the pc and catching up on all the hundreds of blog and forum posts that I’d missed over the holiday period, making coffee when I wanted to without discovering there was no milk left or no clean mugs, sitting on the patio savouring my breakfast while admiring my sparkling swimming pool, all the while revelling in the absence of noise – no conversation, no singing, no sound from the television that seems to have been on more in the last 3 weeks that the previous 12 months.

And the funny thing is…I did all this (along with a large amount to tidying up and a good few loads of laundry), but now it feels like something’s missing…go figure.

On a few occasions over the last few weeks, I’ve climbed into bed after a long loud day with the in-laws and secretly wondered to myself whether I’m ready to be a dad? Am I ready to lose my privacy? Am I ready to share your mom with anyone else? Am I really ready to change my life and priorities and routine. Am I ready for the million daily changes, the scenarios where someone else has put the TV on to watch something that seems to consist of mainly screaming and shouting when I want to sit in peace and quiet, where someone else has eaten the yoghurt I’d specifically saved for your mom, where someone else has decided to take a shower when I’m already in our shower – resulting in both of us having half the water pressure you need for a really decent shower…these and the 100 other silly little things that niggle at me when someone else other than your mom is staying in our house. And surely, with babies, young children, and then teenagers this is what we’re getting ourselves in for…not just for 3 weeks, but for decades!

But, I’m positive it’s different when it’s your own child versus someone else doing these things. Parents are so much more accommodating and understanding of their own children than of anyone else, so I’m positive we’ll adjust accordingly.

Now I don’t want you thinking I’m a grumpy git, but when you’ve been working from home for 3 years (the last 2 of those alone), you notice all these little things. They don’t annoy or upset me, but I do notice them even if only subconsciously. It builds gradually until subconscious awareness becomes a conscious awareness, until you finally get into bed one night and realise you’re looking forward to everyone being gone.

Well, now they have. Now we can get back to concentrating on filling these rooms with our own children, building our own family – with you guys. We can work towards bringing you guys into our lives, moving you from theory to reality, so we can get to know you, your minds and personalities, your quirks, your loves and hates. We can make all the necessary changes to our lives to ensure your comfort and happiness…and in doing all this, morph you from the strangers you are now into our precious children we cherish above all else.

Strange and inane thoughts…

G’day kids.

not much to tell you today – and running out of time – got lots of bits and pieces to sort out because we’ve got a busy work day tomorrow – running a team building event for 30 people. I’ve come up with a few cool little exercises/puzzles for the teams to work their way through – gotta get busy packing it all in the car for tomorrow morning.

As I didn’t have anything specific to tell you, and my minds been in this strange conundrum/puzzle kind of place, I thought I’d share a few of the weird and wonderful thoughts that have been popping into and out of my mind during the last few days…there’s nothing deep or meaningful, just a few things I’ve found myself mulling over at odd times of the day or night.

So, here goes:

1. Do battery chickens think they’re infertile? Your mom boiled up a few eggs last night for us to have for this morning’s breakfast, and as I was peeling the eggs this morning, this thought sort of crept up on me…I mean, think of it from the chicken’s point of view…phew, I’ve been popping out eggs like clockwork on a daily basis for over two years and not once has a little chick wondered up to me and called me ‘Mom’…It’s a funny thing the human mind…once you’re experiencing/obsessing about something, your mind finds the oddest connections…
2. How come I haven’t seen a CSI episode where the suspect has been driven to some crazy murderous behaviour by infertility? You know, you can picture it…Detective Jim Brass interrogating some women who they suspect knocked off her husband cos she discovers he has zero sperm and she wants a baby ‘LIKE RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT!’ Or a women driven to some crazy high on fertility drugs smothers all the mothers at a baby shower with receiving blankets and then tries to abscond with the 12 babies, 48 packs of nappies, 8 dummies, a bottle sterilizer and 14 million babygrows. Or the one where the husband whacks his missus over the head with a baseball bat cos he can’t take any more of the mood swings. These are all perfectly feasible plots for a CSI episode…I’m just surprised I haven’t seen one yet.
3. Do the lab technicians who perform SA’s have some mugshots of dishy, well-formed, perfect specimen, swimmers for the morphology test…you can see them with range of mugshots creating a sliding scale…from the Brad Pitt/Heath Ledger of sperm cell mugshots, through the Harrison Ford’s, the Tom Hanks’, the Patrick Swayze’s, right through to the other end of the scale with the Jack Nicholson’s, the  Marty Feldmans, and the Ron Perlman’s…Do they call over a colleague and say…”hmm not sure if this one should be a Steve Martin or a Karl Malden”.

While I’m talking about strange thoughts, there are a whole heap of conundrums/questions that I’ve seen/heard before that have stuck with me over the years…not sure why, but here they are- something for you to mull over:

1. When you choke a smurf, what colour does it turn?
2. Why is there only 1 monopolies commission?
3. If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
4. Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
5. Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food and cat-flavoured dog food?

There’s loads of these, but these are the ones I can remember at the moment…Sorry for wasting your time really…I better sign off and go do something constructive now…bye

Norman No-Hope transforms into Percy Pin-cushion

Well, I’m not in the overly dramatic, slightly weird and insane mood I was when I wrote to you two last…but I still need to complete part two of the miniseries…so here goes (minus the strange comments and weirdness).

As I told you in my last post…or, keeping with the theme…“Previously on…”, last Friday (well, actually two Friday’s ago now – how time flies when you’re blogging!) I had a blood test and SA done in preparation for our first meeting/consultation with our new FS – Dr S. I wasn’t expecting good news – just seems that nothing’s really been happening – not sure how you tell whether Pregnyl injections are causing an increase on your Testosterone levels (other than a marked change in libido or spots/pimples), but there hadn’t been any obvious signs that the extended course had had any effect. I spent the weekend trying very hard not to think about the results, but kept catching myself doing just that and spiralling downwards into mild depression…felt like the end of the road for me, my testes and my dreams of my own genetic children.

So, it was a long and painful weekend in a lot of respects. I kept telling myself not to worry – there’s no point worrying until you’ve got the results…but easier said than done. Promised myself I’d phone the clinic at 12:01 Monday afternoon – the nurses should have both sets of results by then…that way we would be prepared for the likely options the new FS would give us, and have decided how we felt on each of them, before he gave them to us.

On an aside, your mom and I have a strange way of preparing for these FS appointments (well, I think it’s strange, but maybe that’s how most people approach them). It always feels best going into these consultations thinking you know what the options are going to be and having spent plenty of time talking about and analysing our feelings on each of them before hand…that way, when the FS does ask you for your feelings on them, you have a considered answer rather than sitting there in the heat of the moment, trying to make decisions… It also helps us to feel like we’re on the same page, singing from the same hymn sheet and all those other metaphors for being in total agreement. Now the FS is probably expecting you to hear his suggestions and advice and go home and think about it before scheduling another appointment to update him on our decision and agreeing the resulting POA…but we don’t like that approach…we want to have thought about every possible scenario, talked it through between the two of us, and know what we’ll do in each case, so that when the FS tells us the situation/options, we can look at each other, nod, and tell him how we’d like to proceed. I’m not sure if it’s your mom’s A-type personality, the sense that we want to get on with things and a two-week delay between getting results and agreeing a POA is unnecessary time-wasting, or that we prefer to discuss these options in the privacy of our own home with just the two of us, but this is the way we seem to approach these consultations. Whatever the reason, the important thing is to have the results before the consultation, so that we hopefully have some idea of what the FS is going to say.

So, I spent all weekend planning to phone the clinic Monday lunch time. Then Monday rolls around and I’m so neck-deep in work that I forget…doh! When I realise the time and phone the clinic…it’s too late..no answer…what a dufus!!

First thing Tuesday morning, I take a couple of deep breaths and dial the number for the clinic…wait for the automated telephone prompts, press ‘2′ to speak to the nurses before the voice has even finished saying ‘Welcome to…‘…then wait with sick feeling for a nurse to answer. Nurse answers, tell her why I’m calling, wait with even sicker feeling while she finds our file…

“I’m sorry to tell you, but the news is not good…” Kaboom…my world crashing down…picture long cheesy death scene…that’s Hope dieing there, rolling on the ground, groaning and gasping, one hand in the air, begging for another chance…slow lingering death…that’s that then.

Zero sperm and a miniscule increase in T levels, well within the margin for error in the testing – so effectively no change.

The two weeks of Pregnyl shots that stretched into 3 months of Pregnyl shots to see if my testes would respond has shown zero response. The ‘quick answer’ route that became the ‘not so quick answer’ route has given us zero improvement.

I hang up the phone…no tears, I’m too numb for that…just a surreal feeling that the end of the line has been reached. I’ve come to terms with using a sperm donor, but the longer we’ve been on this journey, the more desperate I’ve become for you guys to be mine, genetically as well as in all the other ways you will be my kids. I pop your mom an email – not the best option, but I’m really not sure I’m up to talking to her at the moment…hearing the sadness in her voice may just finish me off. I log on to Fertilicare to see what everyone else is up to…I can’t stop myself posting about the results…it feels like I need to vent and let it out, feeling all sad and vulnerable, beaten and abused…drama queen moment in the extreme.

Fortunately, the kind folks on Fertilicare post responses of support, rather than ridicule me for being such a drip of a drama-queen wuss…I pull myself together a bit and head off to the clinic to meet your mom and the new FS.

Get to the clinic and meet your mom in the parking lot…she gives me one of those huge big tight-squeeze hugs that make me feel so loved and it takes multiple swallows to stop myself bursting into big fat body-wracking sobs…feeling like a big girls blouse at the moment…fragile, weak and pathetic.

Slowly up the stairs to the clinic – what a difference a few days make – just last week I was bounding up these same stairs ready to meet the embarrassment of an SA with head held high..today, it’s like the walk of the condemned…like ‘Dead man walking’ or ‘The green mile’…surely there should be a soundtrack…the death march…

The short wait in the reception area gives me enough time to suck it up and pull myself together. Receptionist calls us and leads us to our new FS’s office…right past the door of the old FS – hope he doesn’t see us and make eye-contact – I’ll feel terrible, like we’re betraying him, cheating on him with another man – fortunately his door is closed as we walk past.

New FS is young, friendly and seems able to string a sentence together…this is better. We shake hands, sit down and the first thing he says is…”I’ve read through your whole file…” – amen. He’s looked through all the notes, tests, results, etc…he’s taken the time to understand our situation before we met…great news.

He starts off asking us to tell him how we’re feeling, where we think we’re at, and this leads into a long discussion where he explains things, tells us when what we’ve said is correct, or what other things we should understand to get a fuller picture (there’s only so much that Dr Google can explain).

He says he doesn’t even want to talk to us about sperm donors at this stage – we’re not there yet. Your mom looks over at me with this big brown eyes, cartoon round and sparkling with nearly shed tears at this comment. All I can do is reach out and hold her hand, give it a squeeze and continue to pay attention to our new hero.

He talks us through everything, explains about the body, the process, the protocols, everything…he says more in 15 minutes than our previous FS said in 3 appointments. He quotes case histories of other guys he’s treated with similar (but not the same…I’m special I am) issues and talks us through the results they got. He explains why we may not have had any results yet. He says he’s figured out a protocol that he would like to put me on, but wants to get a second opinion from the MFI expert – Prof Kruger – the god of MFI and the reason we came to this clinic. He has a long consultation over the phone with the Prof, while we’re there listening and they concur on the protocol. Now we’re talking!!

The long and the short of it is that he puts me on this new protocol. It’s three shots of Menopur and one of Pregnyl each week. He wants me on this for 6-9 months. I’m a bit worried about this initially – that’s a long time and your mom is chomping at the bit to be pregnant. But, he thinks we shouldn’t give up hope. He tells us that this new protocol WILL have results. There are several caveats to that – the main one being that we may still not get viable sperm, but he’s adamant that we will have some results. It’s just going to take an aggressive protocol and time…

We leave him feeling like we’re on cloud nine…your mom grips my hand tightly while we sit waiting for the nurse to gather all the meds, needles, syringes and swabs. We opt to take 3 months supply and they have to give us a little case to put it all in!! We look like drug barons with enough ’sharps’ for half of Cape Town to shoot up.

So we leave the clinic, far happier than we arrived. We still have to remain realistic – there are no guarantees! There’s still a very real possibility that we may be hunting for Zorro in the future. But for now, we have a new hero, a new POA, a new timescale, we have a target, but above all else…we have HOPE.

Mission Impossible…and other movie mayhem

Hi kids.

It’s been a very strange few days really…you know that saying “stop the world, I want to get off”…well its been a bit like that really. Its been like a really bad cheap movie trailer…cue dude with deep gravelly voice and American accent…”From the man who brought you ‘I’ve got sod all to do’ and the sequel ‘Jeez how’m I supposed to cram that all in to the next week’ comes ‘Rollercoasters have nothing on this ride’. Like the Phoenix from the Ashes, like the Raising of the Titanic, from the Depths of Despair, Hope raised them up…”

Hmmm…okay, sorry about that, feeling in a very strange mood tonight…developing a tri-polar personality – what’s ‘tri-polar’?…well I’m glad you asked…its a lot more complicated than bi-polar…its like I’m actually feeling happy and positive, but sarcky and dramatic, or feeling so down and depressed all I can do is laugh at myself…it’s a pukka clinical term, honest…it is….really….oh all right…it’s nonsense…I just made it up!! But I am in a drama queen kind of mood (like I was on Tuesday morning, but I’m getting ahead of myself).

Your mom’s out for book club this evening – crickey it seems to come around quickly. So, I spend all day at home alone, then she’s out all evening, and she was out all evening last night with the work Christmas function. To be honest, she did come home at a reasonable hour this afternoon and spent some time with me and gave me a jab before she rushed of to drink and laugh and chat with her new friends…so here I sit…you two, me and the computer I use to talk to you…

It’s been a busy few days of work, work which I hate with a passion, work I can only drive myself to complete at the 11th and a half hour…if it wasn’t for the deadlines I’d never get this kind of work done. So that has been distracting me a bit…I get that Sunday night feeling every single night from the time this kind of work comes in, but that still doesn’t mean I knuckle down and get it done asap…nope, not your dad…no, I let it fester, like a big suppurating boil on your back, just out of reach, but always in the way, never letting you get comfortable. I delay and delay, doing any other conceivable (and some not so conceivable) chores…anything not to have to do THAT work. Then the deadline approaches and then its’ all ‘Oh shit, I’m running out of time, how the hell did that happen’…and then I’ve gotta work all day and all night for 48 hours to get it done before the deadline….will I never learn?? No. Not really. I work best under pressure (that’s why your mom takes the top during sex….only joking).

When last I spoke to you two, I was about to head off to our first appointment with the new FS. But before I tell you about that whole saga, let’s go back a few days earlier…like they do in the movies….this’ll be like a little 2 part miniseries…”This week on XXX“… cue subtitle…”Four days earlier…“

It’s Friday, your mom hops out of bed at the ridiculous hour she does every morning so that she can beat the manic traffic into town. I rouse slowly, knowing exactly what she’s doing, where she is in her morning routine, based on the distinctive clatter or bang she’s making at the time.  I watch her blow-dry her hair in the bay window (I roll over every morning to make sure I can have my pervy eyeful of her before she gets dressed). Before I know it, she’s kissing me good-bye and I’m rolling over and going back to sleep. Then I jerk awake realising I never got a few photos of her this morning to aid me with my SA like I cleverly did last time…damn. Oh well….roll over and go back to sleep.

Alarm goes off just over an hour later and I do my usual morning thing…I slowly surface, the natter of the radio slowly penetrating the dull fog…until it’s Whackhead Simpson time…that gets me hopping out of bed like a paranoid frog on a hot coal…gotta turn the radio off before I hear that supremely irritating twit’s nasal voice – the unfunniest guy ever to make a living supposedly out of comedy. Right, I’m up, its into the shower, no time to waste – got a busy action-packed morning ahead of me. I’m shortly reversing out the garage, heading off to the local Medi-Clinic – it’s blood test day.

The nurse at the pathology lab is super…she’s so chatty and upbeat. She always asks how things are going. I tell her this is the big one…she better be sucking up great big bags full of testosterone with a bit of blood thrown in..we need this result to show an overwhelming increase in my T levels. I tell her she should go into the oil business – my veins are like the tokolshe – people are convinced they’re there somewhere, but no-ones ever seen them. I’ve had nurses run out of those little balls of cotton wool from trying to cover the 94 holes they’ve just poked in me hunting for those elusive veins…but not this nurse…first time every time…and it’s always a gusher…she needs split second timing to make sure I don’t blast the bottom of the vial off it fills up so quickly…she’s missed her calling (although I’m thankful she’s wound up where she is).

Then it’s back down to the car, music on, driver and passenger windows down (no aircon in my little run-around and its a gorgeous day in Cape Town) and it’s off down Durban Road heading towards the N1, heading south of the boerewors curtain. It’s off to the clinic for another SA.

As I’m coming down Durban road, I remember my failure to get an ‘inspirational’ photo or two this morning…although it occurs to me that I recently replaced my cellphone with the bottom of the range cheapest one I could find, a cellphone that doesn’t even have proper ring tones – every time it rings its like I been transported back to the early 90’s. (Actually, the reason I have this cheap crappy phone is that your mom trashed her phone and being the kind-hearted generous soul that I am, I gave her my decent phone and got the cheapie replacement – who said chivalry’s dead?). My phone doesn’t have a camera (shock horror I know), and probably couldn’t view a photo if it tried…so that’s a non starter really.

As I’m approaching the junction with the N1, I remember a conversation I had with your mom after the last SA…said I was gonna pop in to Adult World and get a real porn magazine and leave it in the Andrology Room of the clinic when I was done…then place bets on whether it was still there the next time I went. Or contrive a place to hide it in there and a way if letting other users know about its secret location…

So, on the spur of the moment, I thought…F*ck it…live a little…I’m gonna go there and buy something.

They’re a funny place really. On a fairly busy street, great big neon signs proclaiming what they are…this feeling that you should be wearing a trench coat, hat and dark glasses to be seen walking in there…and then these really ordinary helpful people behind the counter… if I was them , I would be looking at everyone walking in there thinking ‘Bloody Perv’ or ‘Saddo’ or, looking at some of the things for sale, ‘Sicko’ or whatever else seemed appropriate. So I had a super quick wonder round…why do I feel embarrassed when I’m looking around and suddenly find myself in the gay section…I don’t know…but I’m suddenly checking to see if anyone noticed I’d inadvertently crossed into there – I hightail it over to the heterosexual section quick quick…shew nobody noticed…they don’t think I’m gay… hang on…why do I care what they think…what happened to this new thick-skinned me…I have no problem with guys doing that sort of thing…whatever floats your boat…it’s your body, your life…whatever makes you happy…it’s just not my cuppa tea that’s all…

Unfortunately, all the mags are plastic wrapped…makes choosing your first over the counter porn magazine purchase a lot more difficult!! Still, I pick one and after paying (and having it wrapped in the obligatory brown paper bag) I make a point of walking down the gay aisle on my way out – eyes front so that they still don’t think that’s my thing…but I’ve made my point dammit!

Back in the car, onto the motorway and down to the clinic. Find some parking. Deep breathes. Remember, nothing to be embarrassed about. No thick jersey on this time – remember the problem with the heating last time…nice and cool, t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms…cool as a cucumber. Jokingly told your mom booking this SA was just a ploy to get to see Miss Gorgeous Lab Technician again…not going to be red in the face when I see her this time!!

Waltz up the stairs, head to the counter. There’s a guy standing at the counter with no wife/girlfriend/significant other next to him or in the waiting room…HA.. I know what you’re going to be doing/have very recently done…you dirty pervert!! No, only joking. Stand patiently waiting for him to finish filling in his paperwork…He looks up at the receptionist and says…’Is being married a disease?’ I chuckle appreciatively…I asked the same question on our first visit…can’t remember the exact wording, but “Married Y/N” is under the “Diseases/Ailments” heading. The receptionist looks at the two of us as if we’ve just crawled out from under a rock…oh well. She pointedly picks up the phone and says something to the person on the other end about a ‘Test 1′…jeez wonder what that is? Guy lab technician sticks his head round the door and takes Mr Comedian through with him and I notice the brown paper bag he’s trying to carry as if it’s not really there…hmm, he’s come prepared…not going to be visiting the Andrology room before me then. Now he’s gone, the receptionist arches her eyebrows my way…and I think to myself…bugger it, I’ll show you…so I say in a loud firm voice…”I’m Mr X, I’m here for a semen analysis”…how brave and bold I am (but between you and me, there was no-one else in the waiting room and the other receptionist wasn’t there either – so there was just the two of us, but still, it felt like a minor victory).

So I sit down and wait…wondering when Miss Gorgeous Lab Technician is going to poke her cure little face round the door and call my name..

Unfortunately, it appears it’s not her shift. Guy Lab Technician comes to get me. Takes me through to the lab and seems a little surprised I haven’t come with my sample pre-packaged – seems I’m the exception not the rule. So he gives me my instructions, the sterile container and a pencil for completing my details on the side of the container…and off I trundle. He reminds me of the dude from CSI Las Vegas…what’s his name…oh yeh, he reminds me of  Hodges…lab tech, soft spoken, seems sweet…maybe I should have picked him up something while I was in ‘that’ aisle in Adult World…jeez, why do I always jump to conclusions when a guy is neat, tidy, presentable and soft-spoken…I can’t answer that one, but experience tells me I’m not often wrong…

I lock myself in to the Andrology Room, have a quick look at the ‘inspirational materials’ they’ve provided before I bother to dig in my backpack for my own magazine. Hmm, seems the FHM swimsuit edition they had last time has gone…someone from a museum has probably removed it for carbon-dating…they’re probably analysing the molecular structure of the papyrus used in its manufacture as we speak. There’s a new FHM…this one’s nowhere near as old as the last one…this one only dates back to the Victorian era…the swimsuits are head to toe stripy things with little bathing caps…not going to be much use!! So I get out my brand new vacuum-packed hot-off-the-press too-hot-to-handle magazine – that’ll do the trick…

It’s then that a few things dawn on me:

Firstly, I should have checked the date on the magazine before I bought it…1980’s pornstar mustache’s are not a turn on – specially when it’s the women who’ve got them!!

Secondly, I only have two hands…one for the sterile container and one for…well…you know what. How the bloody hell am I supposed to flip through the magazine??? And as for those fold out bits…they’re a nightmare to navigate when you have both hands for the job…this poxy magazine is more of a nuisance and distraction than a help!

Thirdly, no matter the inspirational material at hand, listening to the lady cleaning the teacups and saucers in the sink just 23 cm’s behind my head  is not conducive to an erotic atmosphere…

In the end, it was the ‘lay back and think of England approach’…just try and shut out everything about where I am and why I’m here…sort of masturbatory meditation.

I now realise why they insist on a minimum of two days abstinence before an SA…its got absolutely nothing to do with sperm quality and quantity…it’s because if they didn’t, under these sorts of conditions, we would all be Tom Cruise undertaking a mission impossible!!

A life too ordinary…

Hi guys,

I haven’t got anything major or specific to post about today, got our FS appointment this afternoon and that seems to be consuming my thoughts and attention entirely. So I thought I’d waffle on about a few things that I’ve been wanting to mention and take it from there.

There are a few things I’ve been thinking of telling you guys, but they never seemed major enough to warrant their own dedicated blog post…so I’ll just lump them all together in this post. So, moving swiftly on to the first of these items…

I was laying in bed the other night, being softly serenaded by your mothers snoring, thinking about what this infertility malarkey does to a couple. Your mom and I are best friends, we were friends before we were romantically involved. We’ve always talked about anything and everything…there’s virtually nothing I can’t tell her and that she can’t tell me. We have nothing to hide from each other, and after 11 years of marriage are more comfortable than your favourite pair of takkies (‘trainers’ or ’sneakers’ for any non-South African’s reading this). I know it’s natural for a relationship to evolve over time, but this IF journey really does put strain on things – it’s like our relationship has undergone more stress/strain/change in the last 10 months than in the previous 10 years. Now this is the place to roll out a suitable analogy like “the strongest steel is forged in the hottest furnace” or something similar, but before you think I’m gonna do that, I want to set your minds at ease – as hard as this journey has been to date, I still worship the ground your mother hovers over, and like I’ve said before – she’s my raisin…so don’t think I’m springing some relationship breakdown on you guys…our relationship’s stronger than the strongest steel…we scoff at steel, titanium ha, nothing compared to the love, adoration and respect we have for each other.

I did notice a strange phenomenon the other night. We have DSTV (satellite television service – again for the foreigners amongst you) and we have the PVR decoder which means we can record up to 80 hours of television to watch when we choose. Now neither of us are big TV watchers, so we’re set up to record the few shows we do watch and then watch them at our leisure. A few months ago now, we recorded a few episodes of “A Child Against All Odds”, a six-part BBC series on different aspects of infertility and IVF. We only watched one episode of it, the one called “Make me a Dad” about the stories of a couple of guys with fertility issues. Something in the episode bothered me quiet deeply and I blogged about it a day or so later. So we’ve never watched the rest of the episodes…But the funny thing is, we have a regular clean out of the memory on the DSTV decoder, getting rid of things we decide we’re actually never gonna watch and this generally involves one of us scrolling down the list picking things we think we should delete and seeing if the other one agrees…but these other episodes are still on there…and whenever we’re scrolling through the list, they just get ignored, like they’re not really there, actually more like they’re written in infra-red – they’re there but we just can’t see them, like neither of us wants to delete them, but neither do we want to watch them…strange. Anyway, not entirely sure why I mentioned that…just something I noticed that seems to be an indicator of one of the tiny little ways this IF journey has affected us.

Another thing that’s been sort of percolating in the back of my mind for a while has to do with the bill for my SA’s. Now if they told you that a semen analysis is R350, that would be ok…just pay it and move on. But when paying for my last SA, I noticed the invoice was laid out like this:

• Semen Analysis: Cell Count                    = R100
• Semen Analysis: Sitology/Morphology     = R100
• Semen Analysis: Viability & Motility         = R100
• Mixed Antiglobulin Reaction                   = R50

Now I’m not sure about the last one on the list (and can’t be bothered to research it at the moment), so we’ll ignore that one… But surely, when the result comes back as ‘Absolutely Zero Sperm’, they’ve figured that out in the first test!! Some poor lab rat has been wading knee-deep through my ejaculate looking for a sperm cell…somewhere, just one will do, looking here there and everywhere…no corner of the petri dish left unturned (and I know they’re round – it’s a figure of speech)…but not a single bloody sperm cell. So what happens now…what the invoice is telling me is that said lab rat looks up from his microscope, swivels his head to click his stiff neck, puts his hands on his hips and says ‘Nope, absolutely definitely nothing there for the count…but lets now test the morphology and motility of these non-existent sperm cells’…does that make sense to you guys? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t tilt the petri dish to see how many of my zero sperm are swimming in the right direction, I’m sure he’s not comparing the shape and size of these invisible spermies to the mugshots of good-looking perfectly formed sperm cells…so why the hell are they charging me as if he did??? Surely when they break the news to you that the sole purpose that people exists (that’s to procreate) just doesn’t apply in your case, they could temper the bad news just a little by saying something like “But hey, at least you get a R200 refund on your SA costs”….no, they just keep the damn money – probably going into their Christmas drinks fund!! All I’m saying is that they better raise a toast to all the sad broken deformed useless guys who’ve made the Christmas party so special this year by donating R200 a pop to the fund!! Or spend the R200 on some porn for the Andrology Room…would a cheap TV and DVD player be too much to ask? I’m sure they could get Adult World to sponsor some DVD’s! Hell, charge me R200 less and I’ll go out and buy the DVD’s myself…come on people!!

While I’m talking about the Andrology Room, why can’t they spend just a tiny portion of those many R200’s they’ve been pocketing (not to mention whatever they’re making on the countless other treatments) for something really useful…a TV and DVD player would be great, but I understand if that would offend some peoples sensibilities. What we really need in there is some fancy magazine holder that can turn the pages for you…I’ve only got two hands…in one hand is the little sterile sample container, in the other hand is….well…..you know……urm….how can I put this….you know….my joystick…. How the hell am I supposed to be able to flip through the magazine at the same time???? Take off my shoes and socks and use my toes?? For inspiration and assistance they kindly provide a couple of 20-year-old FHM magazines…be better off kindly providing a couple of 20 year olds!! One could hold the magazine while the other one flips the pages…or, one could hold the sterile container…or I could hold the magazine while they………………………….

Anyway, crashing on!

So, those are just a couple of the things I’ve been thinking about recently…not particularly interesting or earth shattering, but welcome to my life…

Yaba daba doo

Hey you two…what’s new and exciting?

Well, for me, it’s the fact that we’ve finally sorted out my workshop – it’s organised and getting more and more kitted as every day goes by. I recently decided to turn my hand to something I’ve thought about trying for a long time – wood carving. Now this probably doesn’t sound exciting to the vast majority of you, but I’ve always enjoyed working with wood – something I inherited from granddad – when I was a kid, he was always cutting and sanding, chiseling and glueing, making shelves or cupboards or whatever else we needed. He even went through a stage where he was refurbishing antiques for a friend who owned an antique shop in Stellenbosch. So I grew up with the sound of the whining power saw blades, the smell of freshly cut timber and wood varnish, the funny smooth feel your hands get when covered in very fine sawdust…and I loved it. As you know, I’m a gadget geek in the worst possible way, and there’s nothing more exciting than a workshop full of hand and power tools!!

So, I’ve been spending lots of time in my workshop over the last few weeks – retreating into my man-cave.

Here are the latest results of this time spent whittling away the hours…nothing awesome, but stuff I’ve enjoyed working on and am reasonably happy with the results. The first one is a flower picture frame while the second one is a more traditional carving of an old man.

As much as I’m enjoying the carving and drilling, sanding and varnishing, the thing I enjoy most is the wood – I just love the wood! I popped into Rarewoods (a fine timber merchant in Cape Town who have been around for decades) a while ago and drooled over the selection of beautiful woods they have. Unfortunately, it’s pretty expensive, but we did find a big cabinet full of sample pieces of wood that they were selling. These were all roughly the same size, labelled with the type of wood and selling for only R5 a piece. So, as at the time I wasn’t that sure what I wanted to carve, I bought a selection of 5 different wood samples. The carved face is in one of these samples – a lovely small piece of Pink Beech – beautiful grain and colouring and a great selection to begin carving with.

Granddad also told me of a place next door to Rarewoods. This other places sells loads of off-cuts and other odd bits of wood. I spent an hour or so digging through the bins and racks and came away with a lovely piece of some Madagascan hardwood. It was pretty expensive, but it was a big thick piece and the grain was stunning. I used about a fifth of the piece to make the Flower picture frame shown above. This was an idea I had a while ago, and I’m pretty chuffed with the end result…just need to get a proper photo to put in it rather than the crappy printout from our crappy printer on cheap paper that’s in there at the moment.

So why am I telling you all about this…well, besides just telling you for the sake of sharing, it’s also become very evident to me that my workshop has become my refuge…the place I can go to, to stop the mad cacophony of thoughts whirling through my mind every waking hour…it’s a place of solitude and escape, a place to lose myself in the simple and calming monotony of working with my hands, slowly creating something out of nothing, letting the mind focus on nothing other than making each cut correctly, sanding just so, sawing as straight as possible, varnishing without streaking…in other words, focussing on something other than Infertility.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in that workshop recently…retreating – you see, we’re off to see our new FS tomorrow afternoon. I had another set of blood tests on Friday and provided another ejaculate sample for analysis (seems silly to call it a ’semen sample’ until there’s actually some semen in it!). We haven’t got those results yet – we’ll probably get them tomorrow at the appointment.

It feels like another big intersection in this journey…I’m preparing myself for the worst, while desperately trying to smother any thoughts of ‘what-ifs’ or any stray glimmers of hope that may peek out from under the shroud of sadness and despair I seem to be under. The longer this journey goes, the more desperate I am for you guys to be my biological children. Before I even went to see the GP at the very beginning of the year, I said to your mom that maybe we should just skip all the tests and drama and go straight to a sperm donor…and I wasn’t joking – at the time, it seemed like a very logical thing to do and I was fine with doing that – saving myself from the ordeal of the tests and examinations I knew would be coming my way if I even started down that path. I was fully prepared to go straight down that route…But the further along we get down this road now that we elected to investigate the possibilities of me producing sperm, the more intense is my yearning to have my own genetic children. I don’t know why, but that’s just how it is.

It’s not been a good week really. I had a couple of SNAIF’s leading up to Friday’s tests and have been a useless mope since then. We went to a friend of the family’s 30th birthday party on Saturday night – someone I’ve known all her life, but not really a friend – in fact, your mom and I actually more friendly with her parents. And there we were at the party, all dressed up – me in my tux and your mom looking fantastic in her black evening dress, and the highlight of the evening was a quick cuddle with my niece…(and at least she threw up on your mom and not me). The birthday girl’s daughter also put in an appearance – just 8 weeks old (or something like that) and as all the friends and family crowded round to ogle her, I sat in the corner staring at it all, fighting down the great big sobs that wanted to spew out of me – I felt totally pathetic. I felt like getting hopelessly drunk and making a great big scene – yelling at everyone telling them that life’s not fair, that how come they get to have their own children and I can’t…this journey is turning a fairly with it, together person into a raving bipolar lunatic!!

Your poor mom has been so busy at work and when she comes home, she has to deal with a sulky petulant miserable git…not sure what she did in a previous life to deserve this, but it must have been WAY BAD!! I’m sorry my angel, I’d say I promise to improve my mood, but not sure whether that’s going to be possible after tomorrow’s appointment…may have to give it a few more days.

So tonight, I feel like nothing more than getting into my scruffs, shutting myself in the workshop and losing myself in the joy of making sawdust. A few posts ago, I mentioned the ‘Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars’ philosophy and the theory that when guys are faced with a problem, they want to retreat into their man-cave and think things through…well, I reckon it’s pretty accurate in my case and that my workshop should have stalactites, bats and a soundtrack of those eerie little plink’s and plop’s of dripping water…and like a modern-day Fred Flintstone, I think I want to retreat into my man-cave and try and deal with these crazy emotions and shitty moods…so until next time…Yaba daba doo!!