If men got pregnant, abortion would be legal everywhere

Great article - so true!

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2015/12/if-men-got-pregnant-abortion-would-be-legal-everywhere

Changes & Mistake #5

In the past few months I've made some long overdue changes in my life. Finally, after almost seven years, I changed my job. I was bored out of my mind, there were zilch opportunities for promotion, no matter how hard I worked, and my two male bosses did everything they could to make my life a misery. I interviewed in lots of places, but I either didn't like them or they did like me! But in the end the right thing come through and I gleefully handed in my resignation. Then followed a six week break where I travelled lots:

First stop, New York!

Central Park:

The newly-opened Freedom tower:

Here's me at the Top of the Rock in New York!

Then we went to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for some R&R:

Then I went sailing on the Solent for a week and took part in the Round the Island Race, which was great fun. Here's one of the 1,500 boats going around the Needles. It took us 10 hours to get round the whole of the Isle of Wight!

Then I started my new job in July, and it's been great. I'm no longer being bullied by odious misogynists, I'm working in a fab part of London I've never worked in before, and my job is much more interesting. A win all round! 

DH and I took a week off in August and sailed around the beautiful Ionion Islands in Greece - utterly stunning:

A Greek cat sheltering in the shade of the gangway

Breakfast: thick, delicious Greek yoghurt covered in fresh fruit with local honey, washed down with a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice. Bliss!

But it wasn't to last. For which I take full responsibility. Four weeks ago I discovered I was pg. Oh dear. I went to get dated at my local early pregnancy unit and they told me I was just over seven weeks gone. Today we had the 11/12 week scan. And I'm sure you can guess the outcome, dear reader. Our miracle was not to be. The nuchal was 5-6mm, making a CVS totally unnecessary. It was clear this baby is unbalanced like all the others. So that's the end of that unfortunately. The consultant saw me today and said that sterilisation would unlikely be suitable for me as I've had previous serious abdominal surgery, which would heighten the risk of complications if they tried to operate to clip my tubes. We are still on the egg donation waiting list at the hospital and we have enrolled with an egg donation agency, so perhaps something will turn up. It's just such a shame to be pregnant, and not to be able to love and look forward to the arrival of your baby, like it seems the rest of the world gets to do. 

Egg donation update

Just to keep you up to date on our egg donation cycle. As I mentioned in my previous post, we found an anonymous, altruistic donor willing to undergo IVF on our behalf. How amazing is that? Lady, you are a legend: your kindness is humbling. With all the Bad Stuff happening in the world, thankfully there still remain some, considerate, kind human beings, and she is one of them.

At the end of her cycle, she produced 11 eggs, which was wonderful. Even more wonderful, 10 of them fertilised! After a couple more days, we were told that eight were developing well and that it was worth waiting until the blastocyst stage to do a transfer. So we went to the clinic yesterday, on Saturday. Unfortunately they had stopped developing as well as they had initially. We didn't have any blasts as hoped, but two had got to the pre-blasts stage, which I think is called morula. They gave us the option of leaving both until today to see if they progressed, running the depressing reality that if none of them hadn't turned into blasts by then, then they never would, and we wouldn't have anything to put back. So we had a decision to make.

The clinic's view was that they probably wouldn't make blasto, and thus the likelihood of us ending this cycle on a disappointing note was high. It was such a shame as I really thought that this time it would be ok, and we'd get blastos, including some to freeze for a sibling later down the line! 

So we decided, sod it, put them back now. We decided to do both rather than a singleton or to wait an extra day. I think if we are going to be disappointed I'd rather delay it for another couple of weeks!! So we run three scenarios: none of them take, one does, or both do and we get twins. Or, as I joked, they split and we get triplets or quads!! 

Anyway, it doesn't look good and we are both quite down. I'm continuing to take the progynova and the cyclogest, and hopefully they will maximise our chances of me sustaining a pregnancy if they have become blastos today.

Anyway, here's a pic of our 'pre-babies':

Best wishes and generous sprinklings of baby dust to you all.