My Lady of the Lantern

The last few days have been full of epiphanies. I tend to take a bath after I am back from the office to refresh myself. A couple of days ago, while dousing myself with cold water, I had this sudden recall of the dream I had right after my embryo transfer - the number of beings in the dream and their character . And this recall was unexpected, and I wondered if there was something there that I completely missed. Atleast two evenings out of the last three have ended with me sobbing on my pillow. And I feel horrible, and I wonder how I have the energy or the will to try again. How hard will it be? And mostly I lament her absence - her in-the-face, rude, jolting absence. Today evening, I thought of if I could just do this whole want-pregnancy-get-pregnant thing again. I am awfully aware of how scared I will be throughout, because I am more likely to bungle in the end (when everything is expected to end with a happily ever after) rather than during the whole while. Epiphany #2 was the...

AF this cycle has been wonky. I considered seriously if I wanted to do Clomid, but I have gone ahead anyways and taken my first dose last night (1900 hrs). I have had very light bleeding this time around. And either, it is one of those cycles, that I get as a rarity (had one like this last year), or that the bleeding will now spread to a larger number of days. I am hoping it is not the latter, coz friction is so fun. Things are on track. I still don't hope much. I have never conceived on Clomid, even though I have ovulated on it, and I tend to ovulate anyways, but this will be a good way to kick-start my ovaries. I attended a birthday party last night, and the grandma of the birthday girl managed to ask me how my baby was. I told her that the baby was dead. I could not control and began to tear up and ran to the nearest loo to cry out. DH intercepted me and was standing outside the ladies room to make sure I was okay. I refused to go home and assured him that I was okay, and he...

As has been stated by me at other places, this year's Baby Season in the family was kicked off by me. Three more women (two of them are my SILs) were also in the race, and I was the one with the earliest D-date out of us four. It's only recently that I discovered an interesting tidbit - these three women and their due dates. Hold your eyes wide open because their due dates read - 27/5; 27/6 and 27/7. My EDD was 13/2*. Three women who have the same 'date' to months in tandem! Anyways, lady#1 from this trio delivered her baby via C-section on Sunday. Baby and mum are fine. Hubby gave me the info on Monday night, and watched as I froze, then went quiet, and then normalized. He wondered if he made a mistake by telling me. And I told him that it did not matter really. I was glad everyone was well. It did not hurt me to know that another woman's baby is well. It hurts me because it freshly scratches the scab of the wound of my baby's death. All I want is that non...

- Remember me talking of being allergic to mangoes? Atleast of the first ones of the season? That's gone. Have had plenty, and my skin is not showing it. - I now weigh lesser than what I weighed pre-pregnancy. I am still overweight, but less so. - For the last few cycles, Aafra Faafra has changed her style. It is ho ho ho till CD4, then a quieter CD5, salsa on CD6 and then need-protection grade of daily single gush of witchy till CD10. - I am cooler. I still have the temper , but I remain low profile in office, and avoid falling into situations that I know will make me fly off the handle. - I can handle spicy food better than before. - The way my body reacted to the Metformin ? Hairfall was not the side effect I experienced the first time I went on the drug. - Why the chin up? AF showed up today morning. So this cycle is not epic; and not like May 2010. Anyways, the plan for the new cycle is -> Clomid (100 mg) - CD3 - CD7; Duphaston (10 mg) - CD 14 onwards, for 14 day...

Yes, I would answer to that call(atleast till today evening, coz I am still feeling it). We went to catch a certain movie yesterday evening. The movie was lovely, and had Sparrows, Mermaids and Frogs. And a monkey too. And yes, too many pirates! Anyways, after the show was over, we (DH & I) were walking around the mall, and around a turn, I found a young dad with a baby in the stroller. The dad was busy doing something, and very spontaneously, I bent down to baby-talk with the baby. She was about 4 months old and very cute. I touched her cheek, and snapped my fingers, and she followed the sound and the movement of my fingers. She even smiled! I looked up and her Dad was looking at me playing with the baby and smiled at me. I looked at hubby, and his disdain was obvious. I immediately quit doing whatever I was and followed after him. 'Why were you touching the baby?' 'Uh, just like that.' 'What if the person would not have liked it?' 'I think he did ...

Well, now that I am TTC again, what am I? For a long while, I suffered from primary sub-fertility. Does my label remain the same? This time around, will I still be a candidate for primary sub-fertility, or because technically this would be baby #2, this is secondary infertility? Am I still an infertile anymore? --- Another Gem (from a colleague): "I have seen that women who wait too long to have children, usually end up having lot of problems in conceiving them." [My cardinal sin? Using birth control pills and having prevented pregnancy initially (plus) another friend of this colleague having issues - no conception 18 months into trying. They waited two years before starting to try for a baby]

Sometimes I forget why she had to die. And why was I not told. Then I have to tell myself - why she died and the reasons why I was not told.

So this time around, I added cycling to my post-oohlala shenanigans. Not as in proper cycling, but as in lying on my back and legs in the air and go for it Armstrong kind. And where did I get that idea from? It's from her ! Birdman had only one question for me, "What are you doing?" Anyways, have I won the Tour de France? Just a matter of time, before I find out! P.S. It was not the Armstrong kind really. Or, I would have whipped up enough air, turned into a helicopter and hugged the ceiling. Birdman should have saved his puzzlement for this possibility, really.

I don't need a calendar. It is as if my mind becomes very alert when 14th approaches. And remains so till 16th passes. I can positively say that I am not in a funk. And don't get any deeper when the dates roll by, but my mind stays very conscious of the dates. Don't know till when this will happen. But the dates change page in my brain on their own. --- My heart skips a beat when I hear a certain kind of * beep * that seems to be registered on my mind from the time I visited CheekyBub in NICU and from the room where I was prepared for the C-section. Now I hear it somewhere, even in environments that are non-hospital and I become very aware of the beep. Image Courtesy - http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_238361/Katsushika-Hokusai/Kohada-Koheiji (Kohada Koheiji by Katsushika Hokusai); Image not used for commercial purpose and no copyright claimed by the blog author.

- I felt 'exhausted' when I wrote the second last post. That is a strange feeling to experience, but it was as if I was drained on some corner. - My bowel movements have gone for a toss. Again. It's the Metformin . I know from last time that it takes a while for my body to come to terms with the drug. - I refused any laxatives for my body and instead tried to up my fibre intake hoping to have the body cooperate to it. And thanks to a case of continued obstinate bowels, I did finally gulp the yummy syrup on Wednesday night. - I also haz crazy hairfall . Thank you, Metformin. - I thought I hardly developed stretch marks from the pregnancy. I was wrong. I noticed a neat set of stretch marks on my lower belly...the one I had not been able to see when my belly was out. Some of them were already white, others were purplish. I was using Aloe Vera on the stitches to prevent itching and all. And guess what? My purplish marks have remained purplish. They have not turned white. ...

Tears are a cheap commodity these days. Phone calls about impending baby showers and browsing through pics of a pregnant self are sufficient causes.

Warning: This is not what you should be reading in case you are feeling very sensitive or emotional. If you are in your 2ww or newly pregnant and scared, this is not for you. Lying on my hospital bed those days of January, life just got spent on things I can never spend on in my walking-around world. I got regular visits from the nurses for injections, pills and BP checks; my mother hung around 24x7 feeding me, and keeping up my fluid intake because of that headache from hell. My father visited almost every day for a couple of hours, and because the news was already out into the world (except me), the number of visitors (other family, friends and relatives) coming to see me grin-faced had completely dwindled. We changed our room inside the hospital. It was iconic because the day we changed the room was the morning CheekyBub ceased to exist in a physical form. I listened to music only one evening. I watched TV only twice. Yet, a world was alive in me. The square looking sky from th...

Before anything else, let me first begin by saying that my family building is far from over. I still don't have a live child to show for it. I began trying to conceive in 2004 when I did not even know that there was an abbreviation called TTC. We hardly thought much about it when my periods came cycle after cycle initially. There was no-charting, just for-fun and hopefully-getting-pregnant sex. The truth is that for quite a part of 2005 and early 2006, we (Birdman and I) were living separately for professional reasons, but we 'met' often. Hence, my initial inability to conceive remained attributed to 'your timing is off'. I had already completed an ovulation study in 2005, and it was deemed that I did ovulate. So all was good. Cut to today, we are still childless, though my otherwise-barren uterus carried a baby to 35 weeks + and CheekyBub died for sobby reasons at 3 days of age. Our diagnosis remains unexplained infertility, and we have already been through many...

Something away from IF and grieving for a brief while! I got awarded with two awards - The Versatile Blogger (by gingerandlime , Jacksmom and theluckylife ) and The Stylish Blog (by C ). The Versatile Blogger (as I understood from Jacksmom 's post) requires me to thank the person who gave me the award, list 10 things about myself and tag 15 blogs that I have begun reading recently. The Stylish blog requires me to do almost the same, except that I get to do 7 me-bullets and award those I like. Combining the two, I am doing a 10-bullet post about myself. And many thanks to gingerandlime, Jacksmom, theluckylife and C. ---- 1. I like chocolates in all forms but don't like ones where mint and chocolate are combined. 2. The orange comb that I use, has been with me since I was in my early teens. 3. I always wanted somebody to gift me a teddy bear. My dream came true when an ex-student gifted me one on my 32nd birthday. He gifted me the same in early January 2010, and the t...

Ladies! Have you visited Tippy, AD and Hope's Mama yet? No? Well Tippy is pregnant! Her first beta is on the lower side, but she IS pregnant, and she can use some more prayers and congratulations. Another Dreamer has just had a time with beta hell, but the baby has cardiac activity and is doing well. She is not out of the woods yet and the cosmic forces must get aligned for this miracle, and she needs all our prayers. Hope's Mama is already halfway through! And she had a terrible scare with a virus. She would have had some very tough choices to make had the virus passed on, but how cool is it to have a BLM who is on the right side of the statistics? I would say - very cool! So go pay a visit to the ladies, if you haven't already. And pray that I bore you with pregnancy updates of my own very soon in the near future.

It is that time of the year again. It was this month last year that we made magic. Our bed is still there. We are there. And it has taken a lot of me convincing myself to not associate luck with a certain bedsheet. And I wonder if we can repeat the miracle. Because if we do repeat it, this would be epic. And if we don't, a certain fear will sink in deeper. Image Courtesy: http://www.pamsclipart.com/clipart_images/new_plant_growing_in_soil_0515-0912-3000-3426_SMU.jpg  (Image not used for commercial purpose)