Looking for the silver lining

One of my clients had a beautiful baby yesterday and sent me a gorgeous photo of the two of them curled up in bed. It is so lovely to get this little window into my clients' blissful experiences and I do feel very blessed to have that bond with them. One of my friends sent me the photo of her 12 week scan which was exciting too. A day of babies - and all them other peoples' - always throws up interesting and challenging emotions for me. I've noticed that recently as we creep towards three years of trying, the intensity of my feelings has lessened and I feel much more at peace with things. But we're only human and sometimes it gets exhausting to listen to a group of friends talking about their second, third or fourth pregnancies or, worse still, complaining and moaning about pregnancy or their babies. I've learnt to be much more careful with myself on this one and just smile and either mentally disengage (basically stop listening!!), change the subject or if it's real grizzling, walk away in the politest way possible! I try to avoid situations where there are big groups of new mums or pregnant women meeting socially whereas I used to walk headlong into them and suffer the heartache.

Most of all, I have learnt to treat every day that I have with R just the two of us as a blessing (it seems to me we have a choice - we can either angst that it's another day without a baby or feel blessed it's a day we get to spend together). Yes, we want to have a baby with all our hearts but we also know that life will change completely when a baby does put in an appearance. So we enjoy our Sunday lie-ins, our leisurely evenings cooking and chatting, our freedom to go out of a night (not that we make use of this freedom much at all - being relatively boring old farts) and the long stretches of time spent relishing each other's company. I think we'll take to the whole parenting thing pretty easily having had lots of training with siblings, neices, godchildren and...pets...and having done loads of reading about attachment parenting and witnessing the incredible benefits in our family circle.

But nonetheless, if the cloud has a silver lining, it's that we got to work all this stuff out beforehand, rather than found out the hard way that we had differences in opinion. Which as far as I can tell, we don't...but I guess we'll have to wait to know for sure!

Out of the darkness comes light!

Oooo, mulching through the wet autumn leaves this morning got me really excited about the seasons! All the leaves that were bright shades of red, yellow and orange are turning a mushy brown on the woodland floor - creating a rich fertile compost for next year's spring fiesta. The Celts used to celebrate Samhain (or Halloween) as the beginning of the new year, and sunset marked the beginning of a new day. This got me thinking about the darkness coming before the light, rather than the other way around, as we have become accustomed to thinking. Whilst the Earth is in apparent slumber, on dark winter days, new life is burgeoning under the wet soil, ready to burst forth.

Connecting with the Earth's cycles makes me more aware of my own - not just my moon cycle but all the little cycles that go on unheeded. Why is it at particular points I feel like nurturing myself and doing loads of yoga, eating well, getting fresh air and feeling BUZZY? Then there are times I just want to eat heaps and heaps of rubbish food, switch off with a film, laze on the sofa. It's quite fun to start to pick up on triggers and why we do our habitual things. I'd like to say that through observing my own patterns of behaviour I've got far better at not succumbing to a huge bar of chocolate (or 2) but not yet....all in good time.... (anyway, isn't chocolate supposed to be good for you?)

As we surrender to the darker months of the year, I get a bit excited at the prospect of quiet evenings by the fire and feel far less sociable than I do in the summer. I like to think that we're laying the foundations for our own spring fertility by nurturing ourselves with nourishing food and loads of rest in the winter. Fertility goes down in the winter months - definitely a sign that we need our sunshine to make babies! I've been getting my regular dose of sunshine by getting outside whatever the weather, with a less-than-eager dog (who, at 13, increasingly turns her nose up at rainy days!) and turning my face up to the sky!

We are going to see a Chinese medicine practitioner next week. She's skilled in both herbalism and acupuncture and has had good success judging by her testimonials so we'll see what happens... Though I was rather enjoying the process of letting go and trusting that the Universe will provide, I suddenly feel like 'doing' something again, hence booking the TCM lady. Is the quest a mixture of 'doing' and 'being' and not getting too fixed on anything? So far, that seems to have kept our spirits high and ensured we feel spiritually and physically relaxed.

Keep getting snatches of a song stuck in my head over and over; 'bless the day/you came to be/heavenly...' It's a song I've sort of pre-dedicated to our as yet unconceived child so it's lovely that it keeps popping into my head unbidden.

the turning of the leaves and the end of a life

Well, here I am again...a little older and hopefully a little wiser and still waiting with open arms and an open heart for the beautiful soul we know is out there. We've put our desires out to the Universe and will await the magic... It's been nearly 3 years since we started 'trying' or rather put our intention out there. It's amazing how much you can grow and change in 3 long years!! Although the months whizz by, when I reflect on a passing year, it seems that everything we have been gifted on our paths has helped us grow enormously. I know R so much better than I did when I married him (or met him nearly 10 years ago!) and I know with my whole heart and soul that we want a baby!


We've had a rollercoaster of a month, with R's granny in Scotland being diagnosed with liver cancer, taking to her bed on hearing the news and leaving this life a few weeks later. We went up to see her when she was ill and I was amazed at the power of words or an idea. She was not in any pain, in fact, her symptoms were the same as before she got the diagnosis and included an upset tummy which she had had on and off for a while. It was really the words/idea of 'cancer' that made her turn away and wrap herself in the insular world of her bed. I thought that showed a kind of bravery too, but it seemed that others felt she 'should' have been 'fighting' as she was always such a strong woman - showing, I guess, their own fears of death and letting go. I thought that perhaps if you've always been 'strong', you might relish being vulnerable on your death bed and just allowing things to happen.


I was reminded how death is a rite of passage just like birth and mused to R that midwives used to deliver babies to life and the dying to death as part of their role in communities. This seemed particularly fitting when we were nursing and caring for R's lovely Granny, I watched him hold her, cradle her head and stroke her hair as tenderly as he would a child. There's something so like a newborn about a dying person, and they have the same needs of loving touch, gentleness and an awareness of their transition. I fell in love with R all over again as I saw him take care of his Granny. It reminded me why I chose this beautiful person to have children with. I know that that wonderful nurturing quality, that inherent warmth and gentleness, will be put to good use when he is a father.


We had both so wanted to have a baby whilst Granny was in this life, as she would have loved to be a great-grandmother. I even considered whispering to her that there was baby coming when she was drifting between states but I'm sure she'll know that better than we do now, maybe meeting them on the way in/out! My sister got pregnant shortly after our Grandpa died - I wonder if my neice and Grandpa met...


Granny was cremated on a crisp autumnal day, with golden leaves blowing from the trees like confetti. It was a beautiful service that reminded us of all of how much had happened in the 86 years of her life. I wanted there to be some peace in dying for her, but in the few words she uttered when she was ill, she simply said she was 'sad' or felt 'terrible'. So there was a sense of peace in the stillness of the day, on her release into what I hope proves to be an incredible sense of joy and abundance.


What a beautiful mystery death is though...and what an incredible gift life is! With many of my clients having their babies over the summer, I have been doing lots of home visits and getting to meet the most delicious little people who I knew in the womb when I was massaging their mums. Last night, I got to hold this sweet stargazer of a boy and instantly felt the warmth and connection between us - it is such an honour to connect with the incredible energies of these babies whilst I am treating their mums and then realise how in tune they are when they arrive earthside. Can't wait to hold our own little piece of magic....

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...