Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, it's been sooooo long! I'd like to be able to start this post by saying we have a bun cooking nicely in the oven....but not yet, dear readers, not yet....
All care, love and tenderness towards myself and my body that had stemmed from reading heaps of fertility literature has gone a little out the window, with bad eating habits and more partying than usual creeping back in. R's third fertility test results came back with the news there has been a slight improvement in his sperm count - up to 5million from 4million (with 20million considered 'normal'; but what's normal, eh?!) though 80% of the poor fellas were still unhealthy and unable to swim....
And yet...and yet...I know that our baby is on its way. Somewhere out there in the ether is our little soul just waiting for the right time. We just need to hold a safe space for when they are ready.

Full of good feelings...

Have started the new year with a lovely buzzy feeling, a kind of release which became a kind of certainty that everything will be okay! It was a bit of a Eureka moment, when I lay in bed thinking that our baby already exists within us and the Universe, a true existential moment of total clarity. Our baby exists on some level, we exist, everything is fine. And I just completely stopped worrying. Stopped thinking about charting or friends getting pregnant or tests or reading more books. The overriding feeling is one of gratitude because I feel like this soul, wherever they are, has already taught us an amazing amount; about ourselves, each other, our relationship, Love, the Universe, the whole caboodle!! I finally began to understand what the healer I went to see had been trying to convey - that it's happening perfectly, this is all part of the journey.

A great great place to float around in for a while - it has been extending from my heart in long-reaching tentacles of compassion. A friend told me that she thought she might be pregnant (it turned out later to be a false alarm) and no kidding, I felt JOYFUL for her, no conditions, just a state of pleasure for another's happiness. This is what I have yearned to achieve - to be able to move away from the inherently selfish world of fertility when all I can think about is me and R and our baby and feel impatient - WHERE IS IT???!!!! - when others tell me their news.

I think the key has been this incredible trust that this soul has engendered in R and I. This has led to this beautiful, empowering and enlightening sensation of LETTING GO. The relief is enormous. Our baby will come. In their own sweet way.

I found before this Eureka moment I was increasingly stuck in a negative mind-set - 'we can't have children' or 'we've been having problems' or 'there's something wrong with R's sperm'. Where attention goes, energy flows. No wonder we were stuck! Without realising it, we'd almost become addicted to being infertile, confirming our status in every conversation about it. I think a lot of the current help and advice for couples with fertility problems (well, that word says it all really!) is rooted in this place of negativity, from which it becomes increasingly hard to get out of. If your brain is repeatedly told there is something wrong, the message floods your body, you remain stuck. Or in a perpetual state of 'trying', the dreaded word that fills your everyday life, rather than 'achieving', 'realising our dreams', 'letting go'.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying (like a well-meaning but skewed friend said to me a few months ago) 'just relax', because I know how unhelpful that can be when you're stressed and rightly concerned about the information thrown at you from doctors, friends and family. 'Just relax' kind of gets your hackles up! I think we all have to come to whatever source of comfort or release we find through our own paths and that is very much part of the journey to parenthood, particularly if ours is set to be a slightly, or much, longer route than others'.

For me, at the moment, it has been a wonderful sense of trusting the soul who wants to come into life through us. Trusting that they know when they want to arrive and that they will know when we are ready. Even though we feel so ready, we continue to learn new things about each other all the time and our relationship has unfolded and blossomed like an incredible flower since we embarked on this - dare I say it - life-enhancing ride. I know, controversial, calling fertility 'problems' a life-enhancing experience but it seems to me this is truly a time to see the silver lining, count our blessings and prepare ourselves with open hearts for the next stage...

Which in our case is our favourite tantra course in March - I can't wait!

a special meeting

No pregnancy yet....a very long wait last cycle - 40 days - led us up the garden path a bit, especially when we finally caved and did a pregnancy test which resolutely remained blank in both little boxes despite me weeing all over it. We decided not to do another one, this was on day 36 I think, and just waited. Very gutted to get my period on day 40 but I do think each time it happens it gets easier - or our skins get thicker?! I don't know. What I do know is my cycle is all over the shop and I keep meaning to get acupuncture again to regulate it. I've stopped doing all the charting and temperature testing as I found it so emotionally draining - I know for some people it is a wonderful tool and I think it really empowers women, but I personally found it obsessive and that it got in the way of just having a good ol' love-in with R. I get up at a different time every day so taking my temperature was always erratic at best.

Big events like Christmas used to be 'markers' e.g. 'by this time next year we'll have a baby', or, in the case of holidays; 'I'll probably be about 7 months pregnant by then so I might want to take it easy on the walks' etc. It seems funny that we used to be so convinced that we'd either be pregnant or have a baby every Christmas and this year we haven't even really talked about it at all! I'm beginning to think that if we ever get pregnant it'll be the most surreal and unbelievable experience that I just won't be able to compute at all....

Met the most lovely lady a few weeks ago who had just had twins at the age of 46, having been trying for 20 years. She and her partner had nearly given up all hope when someone at a fertility clinic said 'hang on, one last try' and it worked. I don't know what she had been through over the years or how she achieved the pregnancy but she mentioned egg donation and also many sadnesses along the way. Yet she looked absolutely radiant - exhausted, shell-shocked, bleary-eyed - but completely over the moon, down to earth and back over the moon again. She said she was so surprised and overwhelmed when she woke up in the morning and realised she was a mum! I felt really privelged to spend some time with her and meet the twins, a week old and wrinkly like sweet little walnuts in blankets. What she must have been through - wow, but she kept her hope alive.

fertility plans a-gogo!

Well, so much to write about as it has been a very long time since I last posted - what better time to get back into it than a wet and windy Monday afternoon?! It has been an eventful few months. R has been doing some incredible soul-searching regarding his relationship with his father and other men in his life. His dad left his mum when he was 11 and R and he met up for weekly 2 hour trips to the football/McDonalds/shopping centres and other soulless (not the football - I think R would be a little hurt if I called this soulless!) pursuits during which they never really got to know each other. Since we married a few years ago, their relationship has slowly been changing, based now on mutual respect and interest. It is very moving to watch them get to know each other after nearly three decades. I bought R a book called 'Manhood' by Steve Biddulp http://www.stevebiddulph.com/manhood.htm about 3 years ago and it was relegated to the bookshelf only partially digested. It sort of fell in to my hands when I was searching our 'library' (ha! I like to pretend it's a meditative reading room with dim lighting and ancient easy chairs and the faint smell of musty books and pipe tabacco, when really it's about 1000 higgeldy piggeldy scaffold board shelves in the living room) the other day and gave it to R to read again. It was the perfect time - as its auspicious twinkling on the bookshelf told me - and R has found it uplifting, inspiring and exciting. He's been talking about doing a 'man course' like The Mankind Project which runs Warrior Training http://www.mkp.org/. I found a course I really liked the look of here http://www.northerndrum.com/home.html - shamanic warrior training! Sounds amazing. It seems to me we are coming ever closer to our goal - and being led in the most exciting and fascinating ways to explore all aspects of ourselves. I'm glad R found something that resonated so strongly for him without me telling him what or how to think. It can sometimes feel that as the women in a partnership, we do a lot of the research and reading around fertility. I have pointed R in the direction of various interesting articles and we have spent many an hour discussing different ideas and theories but nothing has quite touched him like the realisation of a need to access his masculine energy and heal male relationships, going right back to his earliest male role model, his father. At a time when sperm counts are dropping dramatically in the western world, we also lack strong male role models for the generations of men growing up. There are no common initiation ceremonies into manhood as found in many indiginous cultures.

I think it would be REALLY interesting to do a pre- and post- Warrior Training sperm test, to see if all that testosterone and quality, healing 'male time' has an effect. Watch this space!...

For my part, I visited a wonderful healer, Shelley Lemaire http://www.incomingsouls.com/. The bad news is she has literally just jumped on a plane back to her homeland of New Zealand, the good news is that she plans to come back for a few months, maybe more, next summer. Shelley's work is quite unique in that she tunes in with the 'incoming soul'. I had a very restorative initial session with her, letting go of some shame, guilt and sadness in my womb and connecting with the very comforting and healing presence of the two souls I wasn't able to carry in my teens. The second session was opening my womb up to what was quite an incredible and light-filled presence. I was blown away and left feeling full of bliss and light. Shelley felt R's energy when she was working with me (describing us, in words that made my heart soar, as 'soul mates' who have known each other through many lifetimes) and since then, R and I have been consciously focusing our intention on creating a blissful, light space for this angelic being to settle in to. I feel increasingly aware that we have an intensely beautiful being floating about with a sure knowledge of when, how and where they want to be conceived, created and born into the world. Letting go and trusting this is incredibly peaceful.

Into this dreamy mix, I have stirred in the reading of some excellent books and consequent dietary changes. One I have been exploring for a while is the thought-provoking 'The Whole Person Fertility Program - a revolutionary mind-body process to help you conceive' by Niravi B. Payne http://www.niravi.com/. I have to admit I haven't dipped into this one for a while but every time I do I am reminded how important Payne's work is in reminding us of the link between mind and body and how powerful this can be in the quest to conceive. Payne comes across as a wise and gentle elder guiding us lovingly through our past, helping us let go of relationships and thought processes that don't serve us. There's lots of food for thought in here.

I've become a real advocate of Sarah Dobbyn's excellent book 'The Fertility Diet' http://sarahdobbyn.com/ - one I purchased doubtfully from Amazon only to be thoroughly and pleasantly surprised. She has a warm and friendly tone and has done a vast amount of research, making her book both easy to read and extremely helpful. There are many different ideas and thought-provoking tips throughout and she doesn't just concern herself with food, but takes a truly holistic approach, covering sleep through to sex and sunlight. As a result of burying my head in this fertility bible, R is taking a Vit C and zinc supplement and we are both gorging ourselves on seeds galore, oats, ginger etc. Luckily, most of the things she recommends are already familiar fare on our table but we have really upped our intake of seeds! I did a short 'lemonade cleanse' fast over the weekend to remove some of the accumulated toxins of the last ten years or so, and felt really grotty physically on day 2 and 3. I was surprised what came up emotionally too, and I was busy journalling away for most of the weekend (lucky R!). I finished off the cleanse with a colonic hydrotherapy session today with Alison MacDonald at The Andrew Kane Centre in Brighton http://www.andrewkanecentre.co.uk/ and though it is a rather weird and wonderful experience, I feel refreshed and light now. Alison was telling me that some of her clients who have had long-term trouble conceving, go on to get pregnant a month or so after a colonic. It makes sense on all levels - from a physical perspective: stagnant congestion blocking healthy organ functioning in the abdominal area; from an emotional perspective: a feeling of lightness, release and improved health and; from a spiritual perspective: clearing chakral blocks, pure release of being cleansed etc. So, I will now be standing on my soap-box telling all and sundry to 'clear out the poo!'. (R called me afterwards to find out what it was like and was MOST dubious when I suggested he have a go however - soap-box failure no. 1.)

Loads more to write but I should really be getting on with some other things too, so to end on a peaceful and sleepy note; I have become addicted to listening to story tapes to send me to sleep again! When I was younger, I would test my siblings' patience with a desire to listen to story tapes almost perpetually - now, with MP3 players replacing clunky old tape recorders, R doesn't have to indulge with me and the subject matter is a little different. Another dubious Amazon purchase (I spend FAR too long noodling about on Amazon) that turned into a real find was registered midwife and hypnotherapist Joanne Scurr's hypnosis CD 'Getting Pregnant - Hypnotherapy for fertility and conception' http://www.making-babies.co.uk/ . I was really skeptical at first and had a little titter when I initially played it on the CD player ( I think this can be excused because hypnotherapists' voices are often a bit gigglesome when you're not in the right state to absorb them) but have grown to find it immensely comforting and positive. Joanne's very gentle voice takes you on a soothing journey of relaxation, culminating in some powerful visualisations of your healthy womb, baby, pregnancy and parenthood. This is one woman I would love to have beside me during my labour! Perfect for listening to when you're lying in bed, I always find myself lying there with a huge smile on my face thinking about those blissful baby days to come...

Good news! Results are better!

Hooray! Good news! R's results finally came back to us after his second test on September 18th. There is an improvement! Still not great and quite a few unhealthy swimmers but at least it shows that there is potential for change. We went away for a lovely uplifting holiday to refresh our spirits the day after he had his test so had to keep calling from abroad to see if they were ready. On about the fifth day away, the secretary at the GP surgery said that the doctor wanted to speak to R but wasn't available, could R call back tomorrow. R was very gloomy after this and expected the worst so I did everything to bolster his spirits. That evening we had a very involved conversation about adoption, we ended up getting very excited about it and preparing to start our home study (with social workers, first step of adoption process) as soon as we returned.

The next day when we got the results - that there was a marginal improvement from the completely non-existant sperm in the first test - we weren't quite sure what to do with ourselves! It was hard to know how we felt. Of course we were happy but it did mean that our journey was by no means over. No more cycling or even occasional drinking for R and a very healthy diet and supplementation for how long? We have decided to give ourselves a year and then if nothing has happened to start the adoption process. It's strange but as soon as we got the results I realised i had really squashed down a deep sadness about not carrying my own child, birthing it naturally, breastfeeding it, not vaccinating it etc., all decisions that would be taken away from me if we adopted. I had spent the day when we were talking about adoption with a tight chest and it was refreshing to be able to work out why.

A weekend in fine company

Just had the most wonderful weekend away with our neices - proper soul food and feel refreshed and revitalised! They are just the most wonderful kids - funny, clever, warm, loving, totally unique and beautiful individuals... We revel in their company and the four of us always have such a giggly, brilliant time. After I have been renewed by them and their wisdom, I feel much better about things as I know they will get cousins one way or another - one day.

why not us?!!

Lordy, today is one of those days, I think. We had a fabulous big BBQ/party for everyone in our village on Saturday with loads of people and loads of fun, going on until the early hours. We both had a great time, though we had to field the usual 'so when are you two going to hurry up and have babies?' questions. We have taken to telling everyone the truth, that we're trying (not to get desperate about it) and have been for a while. Lots of people get floored by that, most say 'oh, it'll definitely happen for you, I just know it will, you two will make the best parents' before changing the subject. Unfortunately making the best prospective parents doesn't seem to make a difference in this crazy game.

And today...R woke up very glum and I stirred sleepily to ask him if he was ok. He had had another dream that I was pregnant (a recurring theme for both of us) and was really devastated to wake up and find it was 'just a dream' - a bit like an adult version of those piles-of-Christmas-presents or massive-chocolate-cake dreams. This put me in a weirdish mood which followed me around a little on this wet and windy day. I went to see my godson this afternoon which cheered me up no end. When his mum was pregnant with him we kept saying we'd 'do pregnancy together', yet my baby bump failed to materialise. We both hoped I'd catch her up throughout the pregnancy, but the months went by. Now her little boy is approaching his first birthday and she's planning another!! This has happened with quite a few of my friends, some of who had been planning and some who had a serendipitous surprise arrive in their womb. What I have become a master at is having the right face for the occasion - whilst I am, truly and honestly, over the moon for my wonderful and deserving friends, I cry a little internal tear for us. Selfish? Maybe...I still can't work that one out.

Well, I was saved from the silly face this evening when some very good friends we've been out of touch with, emailed to say that they had a baby due in 2 months. I can't tell you how happy I am for them and we both laughed out loud with happiness as they will truly make the best parents - such warm-hearted and fun-loving souls they are. But we're sad and neither is quite voicing it to the other. R just said 'I so want a baby' which is a bit of a mantra chez us, and then he took the dog out for a walk for some quiet time. Facebook threw one at me too, with photos of my ex's beautiful new baby, his second child.

We had this conversation on Sunday, one we go over and over, about how easy making a baby seems for most people. The way people say 'straight after we married the kids came along' or 'they weren't planned but it just happened' or 'I stopped taking the Pill and next month I was pregnant!'. And we sometimes say 'why not us?!'. I think it is ok to be a little down about it now and then.