My Lady of the Lantern

I don't really have an elaborate tale about why the ban on New Moon nights. It is explained thus: New Moon nights are especially potent for Tantric practices and Black Magic. I know that there is nobody on this planet sticking needles into a lemon or tiny doll in my name, but apparently lot of things are attempted on such nights. That is the source of the ban. MIL dear is just being super-extra-frills-added-cautious. Here's my strategy - Won't go out if it I can help it. Will go out and not tell my ILs about my trip. I want to be comfortable in my skin. I want to do things that appear okay to me. I don't want to just acquiesce because somebody else has some prejudices. So, I will follow the line till I can, and then, well you know me. --- On a different note, here is my 9w5d belly . (I am not quite adept yet at taking pics of my belly. I will improve.) You are not permitted to comment on the clutter in the background. :-) I would be 10 weeks tomorrow! 10 weeks!!! ^WiseG...

* To watch the ticker progress to another day is such a blissful sensation. Way better than the ticker that pegged my attempt at ttc #1. * I had to reveal in to another colleague. I was forced to do it so that I could get some legit reprieve. It was not my intention. I am just hoping for the first trimester to roll over so that I can officially go and inform my Director and let it out in open as such. Anyways, she calls me 'Mama', whenever we are apparently alone. She is lucky that I am not feeling violent at all. * My leak-safe colleague ? Remember her? Well, a colleague poked me twice on my stomach and my blood boiled over. Seeing my change in expression, the colleague stopped, but Ms. Leak Safe started smiling. I just could not take her smiling. 'What are you laughing at?' was my question to Ms. Leak-Safe. She should have known better, but alas! * My MIL has forbidden me to leave the house on New Moon days. Yep, you read the sentence correctly. Forbidden. Till now t...

My MIL's brother came visiting an hour back. His son is about to be married (one of the two major family weddings scheduled this season) and he was out and about distributing invitation cards to the wedding/reception. He asked my mother for tea. And when she got busy, he assumed his this-is-a-great-thing-I-want-to-tell-you pose and began: "Chuck out everything you have been doing. Go to the Big-City. Go. They have the best doctors." Yes, Okay. Alright. How can I chuck out everything? Who will give me back my five years? [A little history though: This fellow lost his first two sons post-birth, ( born living but died within five days of birth ) and the third one survived with great difficulty, but survived. The factor was that wife was Rh negative, or something like that and it was managed in the third try, which was in the Big-City. But that was in the 1970s!] He loves me and he cares for me. And he did not mean any harm by saying it, but what he suggests has little merit...

(A Post where I play Doubting-Thomas, and hunt for nothing but ulterior motives) Past Monday, my FIL landed in a hospital when one of his legs refused to cooperate/move/wiggle an inch. He has been recovering from a paralytic attack, and had regained most of his ability to function normally. After he landed 'there', calls flew back and forth - MIL to DH, MIL to BIL...and so on... Also, suddenly they were a sentimental mish-mash, my FIL especially so, and my MIL did not have the liberty to be 'paralysed' by emotions. She had to be running around and making arrangements. My parents visited my in-laws in the hospital and next day my mom was speaking to me when she asked why I did not call on the very day that FIL landed in the hospital? My mother was present when my SIL had called, and my mother thought it was very inappropriate of me to not have called on Monday itself. (I did call on Tuesday.) I had to tell it to my mother. My SIL called up because my FIL gave her missed ...

Yeah! Thanks for the comments, ladies! And I am still hoping for more input on the previous post! There are a few things that rose from the comments left on the previous post. For one, I did not have to sing sad songs for people to guess our fertility plight. In the environs where I exist, it is quite acceptable to be having a baby in the arms before the first wedding anniversary arrives. (One of my school friends had a baby two months prior to her first wedding anniversary, and we used to joke that she conceived on her nuptial bed). The second norm is to wait for a year or two and then have kids. We are way past the norm. People know we have been going to doctors. My mother is an OB/GYN. It is obvious. If we are not showing sociopathic tendencies and there is no blooming in the garden, everybody has just guessed the condition. I am also blessed with nosy relatives/close family. And people ask on the face. That sets everything on the table. But it still pinches me when people ask. When...

Day before yesterday, dear MIL had a sudden/or not so sudden bout of deep empathy for me. She told me that she understood my position (being infertile in a rapidly reproducing world). She herself has fought it. Yeah, is it so? She told me that she had my hubby after four years of marriage and it's a long time to have kids. But let me reveal the secret fertility history of hers. She was not experiencing primary infertility. She did conceive twice before the birth of my DH, and lost both the pregnancies in the second trimester. Both the times, the miscarriage did not happen on its own - she had done hectic travelling and if I understand correctly, she jumped off a running train once and lost the baby. And another time, she started having contractions in the night, but waited for the morning to arrive and then used a bus to travel to the hospital. She delivered the baby before she reached the doors of the hospital. I would attribute those losses to carelessness rather than God's ...

As I end this year and stand at the entry of a brand new milestone in TTC battle, I think it is necessary to recap what this year brought for me. I began this year with cipher. And though there is no baby in my arms, I am not ending this year with a cipher . This year has been eventful. My lap and D&C happened this year. For a long time, I had a hard time convincing my own mother (also a doc) that ‘we’ may have a fertility problem. She was one of the last persons to realize this. I used to have super periods. I was lucky to be having them regularly and predictably. This year, my periods were regular but unpredictable in terms of actual dates. Most of them had me in pain . There was heavy bleeding and in some cycles, prolonged bleeding. I had just come out of Anti-Koch’s this year (six-month medicine course ending in Jan 2008). Overall, I will say that my general sense of well-being has been shaky for the past 18 months. When I started anti-Koch’s, I had an almost arthritic pain i...