a pregnant pause....

So I ponder...

How life changes...

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I swam with rainbow coloured tropical fish...
I drank decorated cocktails
I wore floral frocks, slept naked under a fan, and it was too hot for anything but the strappiest of sandals...

Now...
I shiver in flannel pajamas
Swim daily in traffic
Drink coffee
and wear my new black knee high boots....

The boots are gorgeous, and a symbol...
I'm not a run-away on a tropical island anymore. This is real life now.

And in 48-72 hours time I might be pregnant.
I swim through my days and I can't think about the reality of the situation. I start to hyperventilate if I allow theory to get into bed with reality... as soon as the fingers of my mind start to tickle a sense of the enormity of what I am doing my heart seizes and I can't breath...

Its not just the simple fact that once I am pregnant my entire life and every aspect of my future will be radically different... its that rolled up with the hugeness of the responsibility and commitment involved in being a parent....plus the realisation of something that has been my constant obsession and desire for the last 20 years. Sometimes I have feared that I have held onto the dream of a child to make everything else in my life ok somehow... but the closer I get to the dream becoming a reality the less it seems to be about that. I am no longer sure what it is about... I am running blind on the feeling that this is the only thing that makes sense, the only choice that feels so right that it does not feel like a choice I am making... it feels more like simply allowing a process to come to fruition.

All I can do is trust.
and wait
and hope
and breath...

round and round the garden...

So its tuesday afternoon... my blood test today shows, again, sluggish action on the lutenising hormone scales... My LH, she don't wanna party just yet....
So back on thursday for another blood test...

and round and round the garden... like a pin-cushion bear...
one step, two step... and hopefully diddly-in-there one day soon!

Love

Today I feel inspired by a woman I know... she is not Mother Teresa...she is a normal everyday person, living her own little normal everyday life... but she inspires me by living as Mother Teresa believed...

In this life we cannot do great things...we can only do small things with great love...

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired...

It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing... It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving...

Mother Teresa
So today I am moved....
It is often easy, too easy, to miss things and people of great beauty in our midst. We flow along with life, caught up in ourselves and the things most obvious before us... and we miss quiet ordinary moments of extraordinary beauty... we will never know how many of these people and things pass us by in our mind's limited capacity to take in all of the information available to it...

But today I feel fortunate because I didn't miss one person.... I noticed... and I am moved...

She doesn't do great huge things all the time... but every day she does things with love.
She loves generously and quietly... sometimes I might not notice, so conditioned am I to looking for grand words and gestures... while she is simply doing small things that she can do... and doing them from her heart.
She practices random acts of kindness.
No matter what is going on in her own life she strives to be the best she can for others who think they need her.
She has inspired me.

Too often in my reckoning of my life I find myself caught up in striving for grand gestures... I frankly want to save the world... This woman reminds me that being the best person I can be in everyday life is grand...

Too often I absorb myself in philosophising and analysing... moaning about the great ills of the world... and thus I miss chances to be kind in the moment I am in, in the place I am in...
She reminds me that I can do what I can do... no more or less than that....

She is a good person... a very good person... simply, lovingly, honestly....

And I appreciate her, which is something for which I feel very proud. If I do nothing else today, appreciating this woman is something.

metaphoric dilemma

So you are driving along a long and windy road, speeding a little, thinking about where you are going and wanting to be there already.... and suddenly up ahead you see a car stopped in the middle of the road...
You have to make a split second decision...
Do you brake, knowing that its too late to avoid a collision with the car...and your brakes will lock up and you will be out of control...but you may hit the car with less force ?
Do you swerve and hit the side wall knowing you will definitely crash and probably be hurt...but since you don't know if there are people in the other car, this choice means you'll be the one most hurt... hoping you don't bounce and hit the other car anyway.... ?
Do you shut your eyes and keep going and hope like hell a miracle happens and the other car gets out of the way or you just somehow manage to miss it... ?


Its a metaphore...

What would you do?

late again...

So just to restore the natural balance of the universe... I am indeed late in ovulating this time around... Blood tests indicate little action on the southern front... so I play limbo game...do do dah... around we go... bending backwards to accommodate the uncertainty of life....
Back for more blood tests on Tuesday with the hope of a clearer indication by then...

Yesterday I had my first ever acupuncture treatment. I have always avoided it, having what I consider to be a relatively healthy reluctance to poke needles into my innocent flesh. This getting pregnant business however - it has an awful lot of poking involved... of the needle kind in my case of course :-) My veins have been regularly violated, prodded, sucked of their sweet nectar... So I figured - what's a few more pricks between friends? :-) Seems my yang is a bit stuck... Judging by the imbalance in the pain on the right side of my body I would have to agree... hopefully unsticking my yang will prompt my ovaries to tango more in time... Only time will tell...

These days having my body poked and prodded has become second nature... I hear mothers talk of the strange experience of learning that your body is no longer your sacred private domain once you are pregnant. "lets take a look at you then" seems the catch cry of all and sundry in white coats, apparently... playboy eat your heart out - everyone wants an intimate look at one's pregnant parts it seems... so I am told...
So being the keen bunny that I am - I am lucky to have the chance to prepare early... internal ultrasound? no worries!... Poke dye in my tubes? Bring it on... Stick needles in me... chat with the receptionist about the intimate details of my menstrual cycle.... coach me on sticking tubes in my sensitive bits... My handbag is full of syringes, my glove box disgorges a flow of specimen jars on the unsuspecting passenger, all of my friends and family are intimately acquainted with my hormones.... relative strangers ask me intimate questions about sperm and ovulation...

My body is definitely no longer my own...
Its no wonder that I feel so out of control... my body is not my own but I am at the mercy of its whim....

Meanwhile back in limbo land... breathing.... learning patience.... being in the moment...practising inner peace... breathing...

motivation...

So this week I had the fortune to have time on an airplane (which I love) and this gave me time to read...
So I read this book. I had read a review in the paper and was stuck by the author, Najaf Mazari's ability to express himself so powerfully evocatively in simple and honest language.

"I did not know that I could feel this much sorrow without a body to bury"
he says of wandering the dusty bare grounds of Woomera Detention Camp. Speaking without drama, without sensationalism, Najaf tells the story of his life and hardship in Afghanistan... of his family destroyed, of living life being hunted by the Taliban, of being smuggled to Australia and the utter despondency of the waiting in Woomera for news of hope or despair...

And reading it reminded me to remember my motivation... I have found myself focussing on my work in a removed way... focussing on building my skills, my career, my interest, my professional standing, my future directions etc etc...my my my.... across my career I have wavered between times of passion for meeting the needs of people in need, and being driven by the wish to prove myself and win respect and accolades...

So thank you Najaf... entirely separate to the intentions of your writing you have given me a nudge to remember why I am doing the work I am doing...

its not about me.... :-)

surrendering, surrendering

So once again I learn to surrender... surrender the flimsy illusion of control over this process of becoming pregnant...
I was supposed to have a scan on Friday then, if my ovaries were in a happy mood, start the big squirt on Saturday.... But of course Friday is a public holiday and I am told my doctor is not working...so I book for Saturday... On Saturday I turn up and discover my doctor decided to work on Friday not Saturday... so no scan, just a blood test... and now instead of driving to the scene of the event and commencing this momentus life changing process... I sit on this Saturday afternoon and wait for my doctor to call me tonight sometime with my results... at which point I must either cast myself onto the long highway and speed to the most precious fountain of life... or life attempts to go on as normal for a day, a few days, a week... until my hormones decide to come out and party.... I can't plan... I can't control anything... not my doctor, not my working week, certainly not my body...

So I breath....

and I wait...

and then I breath some more...

That I can do....

..and I have needle in my ear for support if it all becomes too stressful... a wee micro tack is taped into my ear and I am to press on it to release relaxation and well-being into my chi...

Life feels somewhat surreal....

you by my side...

So I found this randomly on someone else's blog... I thought it was lovely...

when i first met you, i don't remember the dress you wore, or the way the wind was blowing your hair in your face, or how you had done your makeup. i remember the smell of rain in the morning. i remember thinking that i could wake up to that smell every day for the rest of my life, as long as you were by my side walking in it.

(http://gottafeelyouinmybonesagain.blogspot.com/)

28

Do you have a lucky number?
Mine is 28...
My birthday is the 28th Jan
My mum's birthday is the 28th Feb
I live at number 28.
I moved in on the 28th.
The licence place of my car happened to be 282.
I celebrate the 28th of every month - its my special day... always has been.

This month I am due to ovulate on the 28th.... I hope its a good sign. Fingers collectively crossed please... I go for a scan on Saturday... and I am hoping for good news for insemination Sunday and Monday...

Last month I was in a state of high nerves in the lead up... this month I feel much calmer. Its like a background knowledge but not so absorbing. It still feels very unreal - like I am watching a film, or empathically listening to a friend talking about her experiences... I am not sure that I really realise that its me that is doing this.

I love flikr

I love www.flikr.com
If you have wondered where I get the images for my blogs... some are mine..but the rest are from the most fabulous flikr... a treasure trove of images, mundane and magical.
How wonderful that people with such talent are happy to share their beauty freely...
How gorgeous is this image of ceremonial bathing at Tirta Empul, Bali...


:-)

If you haven't noticed, people are dying...

So today I read an incredible interview in Vanity Fair (July 2007 Africa Issue). It was Brad Pitt interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Brad was, well, pleasant but uneventful I have to say... much as I think he is officially the "man who has everything in life"... but the interview was fabulous and inspiring because it was built around the concept of "Ubuntu".

Ubuntu is described as, if I may clumbsily summarise the wonderful words of ADTutu... "the essence of being human"... in that we can define a person only in relation to other people, we cannot be human in isolation from others, we can only be human in interconnectedness with others. ADT talked about no human ever being fully self-sufficient, to be disconnected is to be sub-human.

"I need all of you to be who you are in order for me to be all that I am"...

He then went on to talk about the concept of restorative justice in South Africa, rather than retribution or reprisal... and that this is an example of living the concept of ubuntu, because according to ubuntu the greatest good is community harmony.

After this he spoke about one of my favourite passions - the obscenity of defence spending... trillions of dollars on a system that doesn't make sense and only makes the world more insecure... Says ATD "You want to fight a war against terrorism? Let me tell you one thing for sure. You are not going to win it, period. You won't win that war until you work so that the conditions that make people desperate are eradicated. Then you will realise that you won't have to worry about guys being upset with you."

And as I read this I listened to the news, with the Australian Government and Australian Federal Police introducing stronger internet surveillance... claiming that we are high risk of internet terrorism. When will we learn? This cops and robbers attitude of catching the bad guys is outdated and a waste of time... its like catching a rain shower with your hands.... you might catch some random drips...but many will slip through your fingers and you won't get anywhere near the rest of the storm... We need to focus on the causes not the results... Its like focussing on where to put the band-aids on your feet while you continue to stride across broken glass... Why not search for a broom? The reality is - if we ever needed to use our weapons then we would really understand ubuntu... we cannot destroy our enemies without destroying ourselves... and we cannot be safe without saving our enemies...

This was ADT's closing quote...
"We have the capacity to feed everyone on our planet. We have the capacity to ensure that everyone has clean water. We have the capacity to ensure that everyone has affordable health care. We have the capacity to ensure that every child gets the inoculations that they ought to have as children. We can prevent many of the diseases to which our children in the poorer parts of the world succumb. For goodness sake. Why don't we wake up to the fact that you can't have apartheid security. You can't have apartheid prosperity. If you are going to have security, its going to be security for all. If you are going to have prosperity, its going to be prosperity for all. If you want to be free, you can't have quarantine freedom. Its going to be freedom for all. And if you want to be human, we are not going to be able to be human in isolation. It will be that we are all human together."

I turn the page and Jeffrey Sacks shouts from the next story..."If you haven't noticed, people are dying. Its an emergency..."

"millions of people die every year for the stupid reason that they are too poor to stay alive... this is a plight we can end"
"the basic truth is that for less than a percent of the income of the rich world nobody has to die of poverty on the planet"

Ubuntu

I am left sitting with the question...
How can do I live my days knowing that the atrocities of the world are going on, and do almost nothing about it?
There are several answers, I know... I just can't bear to think them out loud in my head.... So I sit instead with the echoing question...
"How do I live my days, and live with myself, knowing that the atrocities of the world are going on around me, and not to do anything about it?"

zzz

Ok so its 6:59 pm... and I am soooo ready for bed...

What has become of me?

I know the answer to that one... she has blonde curls and is 2.5 years old...
This parenting business is really rather tiring I find!!

Geez...
zzzz
zzzz
zzzz

oh snuff shndops where was I? oh yes... the days seem full, the nights welcome... the gentle peace of a quiet evening is no longer a sign that I have no social life...but rather a cherished oasis of calm... there is a brief window of consciousness and then crash clatter plop... its down I go... zzzzz
At least I am getting used to it before the real hard work starts!


I have an illusion that I am not quite ready to let go of. Its just a little one... but it means a lot to me. I am holding tightly to the idea that my life will go on after a child...not exactly the same...but recognisably similar... somewhere in my mind there is a beautiful land of rainbows and flowers...and in that magical land I am able to pop forth a cherab-like little being who will just happily tag along with me as I hop, skip and jump my way through my creative spontaneous adventurous little life...
I know in my logical mind that the reality is that life as I know it will cease to exist and I will be thrust forth into a strange new world... a world in which my dream of lazy sunday cafe breakfasts with cute child happily sipping on a babychino will be dashed to a thousand pieces with the last vestiges of my sanity and my waist line...
But I am not ready to let go of the dream just yet....

And on that note... at this stage we are aiming for somewhere in the days leading up to the 30th of this month for the first actual try... lets hope the cannons are locked and loaded this time!

Inspirational Words No 9982704-3

I LOVE this.....

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare dream of meetin gyour
heart's longing

It doesn't interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human

It doesn't matter to me if the story you are telling is true
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul
If you can be faithless
and therefore be trustworthy

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
everyday
And if you can source your own life from its presence

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon
"Yes"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children

It doesn't interest me who you know
or how you came to be here
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back

It doesn't matter to me where or what or with whom
you have studied
I want to know what sustains you from the inside
when all else falls away

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments

and...
I would personally add :

I want to know if you can be yourself fully with me
and see me
rather than the perceived reflection of yourself in my eyes

I want to know that I can be fully myself with you
and trust you see me completely
not distorted parts of me
that fit with your view of the world

What would you add?

Its not about me...

So I have noticed a theme in many of my conversations with people recently... and its a theme that echos through my own sense of the world and myself in it.

Recently I had a rather interesting chat with a woman about the theory that almost all of our modern "ills" can be traced back to basic survival instinct gone haywire because we are unable to recognise that these needs have actually been met now ... thus we keep seeking to meet them in pathologically exaggerated ways... eg the need for safety, security, food etc

And in keeping with that I have a thought blossoming that one of the ways in which our instinctive need for safety manifests is in the common way that people scan the world for information about themselves. I notice how much we (myself and many people I know) spend so much mental energy searching the world and people around us for information about ourselves. I can only assume this is survival instinct gone rampant... scanning for danger and checking our own strengths and vulnerabilities has gone mad... lacking the ability to turn it off, we are like a microwave that starts cooking the fridge... we look constantly for more and more information about whether or not WE ARE OK....

And the result.... like a virus... the habits mutate and grow until navigating in the world becomes really hard work!

Is there a cure? I'm no expert... but in many of my conversations with people and myself... it seems to come back to this simple mantra...

ITS NOT ABOUT ME!!

If we can get it through to our inner selves that the entire world does not exist for the sole purpose of feeding back information to us about whether or not we are ok... then PHEW - what a relief!!

ITS NOT ABOUT ME...
ITS NOT ABOUT ME....
ITS NOT ABOUT ME....

Unless it is about me...

But good to assume the negative until proven otherwise, rather than the other way around...

Not rocket science I know - but just one of these thoughts that its good to remind oneself about a few hundred times... a day...

Smiles to all...

Letting go of Illusions...

So my readers may remember that last year I had a moment... A moment when I let go, handed over, surrendered, gave up the thin and insubstantial illusion of control over the events of my life...
And what a relief it was... and then - Oh - things just started falling into place....

Clearly I didn't retain the learning sufficiently... How wonderfully generous of life to give me another precious chance to learn that lesson again and again...

The only stress really is living inside the bubble of delusion that I am in charge here... once that pops, well... no need to worry, just flowin' with it all...

:-)

OOPS!!!

Damn Damn Damn
Who'd have thought I would be a victim of premature firing of the cannons....

So on Thursday (day 12) I went in for my ultrasound to check how late I would be this month... of course we all know that ovulation should in theory be around day 14... but in my case, going by consistent history, it could really be anywhere between day 14 and day, well... 24 or even later...
My dear friends will, once again, not be surprised that I am consistently late... and rarely on time....
and well, never been early in my life... shockingly surprising I know... :-)

BUT... "hmmmmmm" says my lovely Santa Claus Doctor... and "kerthump" goes my heart in the by now familiar anxiety reaction I have to any sign that anything could go wrong in any way... "hmmmm" "That ovary looks like it has already ovulated"
...
"NOooooooo" I say...Impossible! Perhaps that is still from last month's terribly late ovulation....
"Hmmmm" says SCD.... "we had better do a blood test"...

So - in I pop to the blood room...once again... am getting terribly good with needles these days...
and off I go to work... confident that I must be really really late this month...

BUT LO! What news is this??? At lunchtime I call for the results and, in the words of the dwarf from The Princess Bride... "Inconceivable!" and indeed it is in every sense of the word... I popped early... and thus... no conceiving for me this month!! Seems I ovulated on day 11... What's with that??

Over-excited?
Over-stimulated?
Weird quirk of fate?
Destined not to give birth to a Capricorn?

Whatever the reason, despite being psyched and prepped, with a car full of syringes and specimen jars and a head full of hopes... there will be no party for my uterus this month...

So I am learning the fine art of patience... while my lovely blue eyes reminds me of the joys of red wine and soft cheeses for another month... another month to, well, do that yoga and find that inner peace... another month to work and play free from morning sickness... another month to plan and hope....

Ah the rollercoaster ride begins... all aboard!

clear doses of sympathy

So I had my tubes dyed... and twas with a small amount of disappointment that received the news that I would not be renovating my inner halls with a delicate shade of mauve or lime... but rather being squirted with a sticky clear goop that would only show up under xray... I mean, its up there with expecting a nightclub arm stamp that will demonstrated to all and sundry the next day that you've been a cool rager the night before ...and then getting one of those uv light things.

But ... I managed to sooth myself though the let down and well, let my pants down instead... and I am pleased to report that my years of dedication to meditation, yoga and the harmonising of my inner energies paid off - apparently I was the easiest hystercellopindagram (or whatever it was called) that they had ever done... calm and relaxed, I maintained my inner poise through the indignity, and had a lovely time watching my ever so pretty tubes turn black on the xray monitor... they really are ever so delicate and swirly.... I had envisaged sort of hoses, but in fact they are more like tendrils dancing above an orchid...

The most challenging part of the process I must say was not the being poked and prodded, blown up with a balloon, pumped with sticky goo and then cramping annoyingly afterwards... No - by far the worst bit for me was the terribly lovely supportive kind Doctor and Radiologist. Wonderful and understanding women they were... and MOST sympathetic that I was there alone... the radiologist came and stroked my shoulder when she realised I didn't have a support team to come into the room and hold my hand.... Now really... I know in my head that I am totally fine with going through this process in my own way and with the support of everyone, but that this is essentially my gig. I also know that the LAST thing I want when I am half naked and spread legged on a bench for half an hour is a support person holding my hand and blushingly averting their eyes... I mean its like ignoring the elephant in the room...

But it took me a good 24 hours to recover - not from the procedure, but from the emotional impact of being the object of such well meaning sympathy...

But... back on track now and in sane mind I am pleased to report.... :-)