Mad as a March Hare...

God it's nuts in my world at the moment.

Here's a little Maths problem for you...

One headteacher used to do the job five days a week and have no class to teach.

Two deputies share the role after he leaves but only have a total of 4 release days to do the job between them. They also have their own full time classes to plan for and teach.

Does it add up???

Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

I am run absolutely ragged and barely have time to eat or sleep or think let alone blog so I aplogise profusely to all those people who e-mailed me a little concerned that I may have got stuck down a well etc etc

So, might not be on here much whilst this headship thing is going on but hopefully will be back to my usual self in the not too distant future.

Good news though is that we've been back to the hospital and have got a date for our next round of IVF.

We had a choice when we got there of thawing the embryos one at a time and have 7 more individual goes over the next 18 months or so. This came with no guarantee that the embryos would continue to develop or any increase in percentage chance. It did however, give us more than one free "go".

Option two was to thaw them all and try and grow one to "blastocyst" stage which is apparently when the embryo splits clearly into the part that will become the placenta and the part that will become the baby. If it gets to this stage, and twinned with the fact I had a biochemical pregnancy last time, the consultant says we have an 80% chance of success. However, this is literally putting all our eggs in one basket/test tube as although they may be able to freeze any additional blastocysts, the chances are we will only get one.

So, we've gone with option two. We've gone for the gamble and are hoping March will bring us a little good news. If it doesn't work then it's back to the drawing board, we dig out our piggy banks and go down the paid route with the whole damn needle/injections round from the very beginning again.

The other nightmare is that I am convinced OfSTED will call to inspect our school as soon as the embryologist has implanted me and peeled off her rubber gloves. I then have to think about whether I gamble my baby or my career. I have to get used to the idea that our IVF may never work and that I may only ever have my career to fall back on. Leaving my inexperienced colleagues to steer the ship when it'll be my name on the front of the legal, public document of the OfSTED report would be career suicide.

Tom and I have therefore agreed that we go ahead with the blastocyst transfer as the consultant said the funding options are changing again in April so we may not have this chance again unless we go ahead in March. We've also agreed that if it coincides with OfSTED then I'll just have to go into work too. Our reasoning is that if it's a strong little fighter and a good embryo then it'll be fine; with any luck though, our timings won't coincide with it and all will be well.

If it doesn't work then in the summer we'll be looking to going abroad to pay to have it done, probably in Estonia where I have lots of family. At least there they'll replace more than one embryo so there's more of a chance of it working.

In the meantime I'm on "project fat". I've lost quite a lot of weight through stress recently and my BMI has dropped to 21. Apparently being a little heavier than this is the ideal for pregnancy so the consultant has instructed me to put on a little more weight if possible before the next round. It's a bit hard though when I barely have time to eat and I'm desperately trying to work off the stress and keep fit at the gym 3 or 4 times a week. I don't want to give up the gym because it's what helps me to destress and helps me to sleep after a manic day but at the same time I'm struggling to get enough fuel in to keep the weight on. I've lost almost 5Kg since mid December; the consultant even laughed that I was one of the only people she'd ever known to lose weight during IVF and Christmas!

It's also been a little rough between me and Tom too. We were fine just after the news our first round had been a success and then a failure but then for just over a week we really drifted apart. He was away a lot and I just felt like I'd lost my mojo. I've felt fairly useless in all honesty since the, "loss of the biochemical pregnancy". I guess all the hormonal turmoil was a delayed shock and I've felt pretty ugly, unattractive, unsexy, a bit of a "lab rat" and an all round bit of a nothing actually.
I've had that many people working in my ladygarden over the last couple of months that I'd kind of switched off a little and just begun to treat my body as a bit of a Science experiment. The swelling and bloating which forced me into less glam clothes didn't help either and all that sitting around doing nothing does nothing to fire up your enthusiasm. I've also been so busy at work that I hadn't really addressed how I really felt and dealt with all the feelings of failure. I explained it all to Tom on Thursday and he said he felt we had drifted too. I told him how I felt unattractive and how I felt all the intrusion had made me lose my femininity somehow and now he's on "project sexy". This is his own invention and it has so far ranged from awful karaoke serenades down the phone to me at ridiculous hours, taking me out for some lovely meals, insisting that I shop for a wardrobe of new clothes (I paid before anyone freaks out) and booking us a boarding holiday to get some "us" time. He's a sweetheart isn't he. I shan't lie and say it hasn't been a bit strained lately but I think that we've both acknowledged now that we've had to have a mini-grieve for it all. At least next time we'll know to take more care of "us" as well as the embryo and me.

So, all in all, it's a bit bonkers here really but at least we have March to look forward to. Thanks ever so much again for all your support. Seems odd that it's actually now it's all over that I'm feeling the strain and not whilst I was actually in it.

Anyway, will hopefully post on here again soon but I really am absolutely shattered at the moment. Needless to say I have not forgotten this little cuddly corner of cyberspace and desperately want to be on here more as I miss you guys! However, looks like it might be flying visits over the next few weeks but I shall be thinking of you all and really do get so much support from your messages and e-mails. Am actually just off now to check out the hypno thingy!

Bye for now though.

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