Sepcailist visit

Finally after 3 years of trying, and 6 months of tracking temperatures, we are off to see the specialist.

I was told I had PCOS when I was about 24, so we have always known that we were unlikely to have a child naturally and drugs would need to be involved. But we had decided to just wait and see what fate had in store for us.

We had made a massive change and sacrifice to have a family... more than most.

In 2009 one of my close friends died, she had Pancreatic cancer and at 38 left behind a husband and 2 young children. Being surrounded by her family and witnessing the embrace of that family, forced my husband and I to reassess everything.

Before this we really had not planned to have our own family. My husband has two children from his first marriage, and didn't really want more. I on the other hand secretly hoped he would change his mind.

And this is the way it stayed until one day in the haze of hospice visits, we took the weekend off to visit the zoo. Here watching families and kids happy and smiling, we realise what we were missing. I still wonder if secretly my dear friend didn't whisper in his ear... wouldn't surprise me if she did. :o)

So 3 years later here we are. We have left good jobs, sold our house, brought a struggling business all in the grandest effort to complete that dream of a family.

We went together. The Dr was lovely. Kind explained things. But the answer in the simplest terms is that it would be a 'miracle' for us to have a child without drugs. And because of my size they would not consider me to even start treatment. He carefully explained that the cycles that I had been so excited about their return, where not real ones at all. And that even though I was getting a temperate spike and a period, my eggs had firmly refused to leave the nest. An ultrasound confirmed that my ovaries were covered in cysts.

If I lost 50kgs I could start treatment. 50kgs!! I sat there and did the maths in my head. To lose that sensibly would take two years. That would make me 39 and my husband 44. The age cut off for IVF is 40.

The walk back to the car was a silent one. We were both shocked that so quickly and with one 20 minute visit everything ... everything changed.

I know a child will change our lives, but if I immersed myself totally in the world of weight loss in the effort to have a child, and the drugs and IVF fail, as we know from sad stories that it sometimes does, I am frightened it will break me forever.

We need to take time to catch our breath. I am going away next week to spend a week with family down south. So we are going to take this time to each think about what we want. And formulate a new plan.