On the face of things, my fertility specialist and hairdresser have very little in common. Their work involves distinctly different regions of the body. Their skills potentially contribute to vastly different outcomes.
Heartbreak on admittedly varying scales can often be the most obvious result of their desire to experiment or use creativity.
At this stage of my life, I need my hairdresser almost as much as I need my fertility specialist.
Continue reading Groomed for IVF
This infertility malarkey requires us to take a number of rather wide leaps of faith. During an IVF cycle we might find ourselves willingly injecting ourselves with various synthetic hormones and other lovely scientific creations designed to stimulate our bodies into doing all manner of amazing things.
Of course, the honour of doing this only occurs after we have signed our lives away, by acknowledging that the clinic and doctors are not responsible for any future health issues that might be visited upon us or worse still, our future offspring and every generation thereafter, it would seem.
Continue reading Too much to swallow?
Greek mythology tells of a king who was punished by Zeus. Sisyphus was sentenced to an eternity of rolling a huge bolder uphill only to watch it roll down again. The frustrating and repetitive nature of this task resulted in the expression of Sisyphean meaning something that is pointless or unrewarding. We do not need to look to ancient times for such an analogy; we have a perfect equivalent in our own contemporary times. Replace that punished king with an average woman who falls within reproductive age and is considered infertile, and substitute that bolder for IVF procedures and there you have it; a ARThean Challenge. Continue reading Why? Why do we do this?
Until my body manages to produce bar-coded mucus, Lifeslurper has not got much hope of understanding her own fertility – or lack thereof.
Is it too much to ask of medical science to create a special barcode reader for female mucus? A reader that is attached to its own measurement tool not unlike the DEFense readiness CONdition (DEFCON) used by the United States Armed Forces to describe activation and readiness levels wouldn’t go astray either! DEFCON 5 describes standard peacetime protocol, while DEFCON 1 represents expectation of actual imminent attack. RUMpy PUMpy requirement (RUMPUM) measurement would automatically tell us when it is time to “go for it” or “don’t bother,” unless of course there is a compelling interest or reason why you might actually want to, outside of this whole baby making routine stuff.
Continue reading Charting our way to a baby