Sunshine and my overies, the saga.

It's been a while, because I haven't been feeling agonised. I'm actually pretty peaceful at this point, it took a bit to get here though. Sunday before last, another of our friends announced that they were pregnant and I ended up leaving the service in tears soon thereafter. I think I would have been ok if it had of been some of our other friends, but I didn't even know they were near trying and it came as a bit of a shock. Especially realising that this is going to keep happening for maybe the next couple of years. All very deperessing. So the next day I'm off to see the councilor again, to try and figure out a way to deal with this faster, so it doesn't knock me out for a couple of days. We came up with - blogging more, putting the posts up as soon as I think of them. Praying more, just to put the issue over to God, and not let it keep running around my head and to actually stop talking about it. The last one was actually a bit of a suprise to me as I have always grown up with thinking that the best way to resolve an issue was to keep talking about it. It actually works though. Once we've decided what to do, if I stop talking about it, it stops churning me up inside and we can get on with our lives.
The thing is though that as I said, less angst means less working my feelings out on the blog, so slightly less frequent posts. Here's an idea though, maybe I could talk about something else for a while.
I worked most of easter, so I didn't really get a break that the rest of the world seems to have. Two days of double-time-and-a-half kinda rocks though. I earnt enough to pay for my laproscopy and the first round of IUI, which really rocks.
Oo, I just remembered, I've made an unusual discovery. My ovaries know when the sun is shining! As the days get shorter, my cycle gets shorter, down to about 24 days at the winter solstice. Then as the days lengthen, my cycle gets longer, up to about 31 days at the summer solstice. This lead to me getting kind of worried last autumn as my cycle go shorter and shorter with thoughts of luteal phase defect and that my cycle would eventually go down to nothing. Then in winter, it seemed to level out a bit at 24-25 days and I thought that I was to be condemmed to a lifetime of three and a bit week cycles. Spring was spent getting my hopes up as I was a day longer, almost every cycle, right up to the summer solstice when I hit a record cycle length of 31 days which almost had me convinced I was pregnant, inspite of what the test kits might say. Now we're back into autumn and my cycles are getting shorter again and I got caught out, again. Hint: don't do a 3km walk in half an hour right before you start. Oh, and especially don't do this when you left all of your pain killers at home and now have to walk another 2 km to get to the bus for the half-hour ride home. Betsy was really nice when I finally staggered home and provided large quantities of chocolate and heaven ice-cream. Now that I have a clue as to what the hell is going on with my body though, this all should get easier, both with getting caught out and with getting hopes up. Of course the only way to test my theory would be to go to the northern hemisphere for a year and see if it reverses, but I don't see that happening quite yet. Also, what if I went to the pole for the winter, how short would my cycle get? Is the length dependant on the amout of sunshine (10 hours a day = 24 day cycle sort of thing)? Or is it a relative thing (less sunshine than last time = less days than last time)? And another thing, does this happen much, or am I just special? All very interesting.

I haven't updated in a while, but it hasn't been for lack of insparation. I tend to think about my life in blog posts now, as if explaining my life to someone else will make it make more sense.
We got all of our test results back last week and it is pretty conclusive that we're not going to concieve on our own. We're going to try IUI later this year and that should give us about a 1 in 10 shot, maybe as much as 1 in 5 if you do some massage to the math, given our ages and health. This is yet another area in which Nellie the scientist and Nellie the christian have trouble getting along.
The scientist 'knows' that every cycle is a random probability, you go back to the beginning and throw the dice again and the dice have no memory, you can't just add up the number of cycles and say that with such and such number of goes, you should have a result. One in five doesn't really look like betting odds from here, and part of me wonders why bother when we're more than likly to fail.
The christian 'knows' that there are no dice and that probability doesn't mean much for the individual. We will have a baby when God makes it so and if we never do, then that is that way our lives are meant to be.
I think that my theology is a bit screwy here. I know as a christian that my life is lead by God, I will follow where He leads me. But we don't live in a perfect world, there is sin in the world and bad things happen. And so is this infertility a bend in the road that God has put there to make us grow or is it a result of an inperfect world and basicly tough shit?
And how much intervenition is alright. I personally would lean towards using the tools that are avaliable to allow Gods will to be done.
On of my favourite modern parables is of a man on the roof of his house in the middle of a flood. Someone comes by in a boat and offers to take the man to safety but the man says that there is no need, that God will save him. A helicopter comes by and lowers a rope and offers to take the man to safety, and once again, he refuses, saying that he has faith and God will save him. The flood water rises and the man drowns. In heaven he complains to God, "I had faith that you would save me, why did you let me drown?" God replies "I sent you a boat and a helicopter, what more did you want?"
I tend to think that if God didn't what us to use what we have, we wouldn't even need sex to get pregnant, we would just have to pray, and one doled out miraculous miracle would occur. This isn't to say that micacles don't happen, they certainly do. But there are miracles of God allowing us to use the resources at hand for His will to be done, and there are miraculous miracles when we can't do anything and God works without our imperfect tools.