Dashed Hopes

Things are going downhill again. I had my long-awaited meeting with my friend's gynaecologist in Montpellier yesterday. He basically said my chances of getting pregnant are pretty slim and will be even slimmer by the time I'm 45. Great. But he also told me that no such thing exists as a fertility test to see how fertile I am or how much longer/how many eggs I have left. I know this isn't true (http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/03/14/time-is-not-on-your-side/) which puts into question everything else he said. I do have to note, however, that he did work wonders to get my friend pregnant.

At the end of our meeting, I asked him about egg freezing and sperm banks. He looked at me wide-eyed and speechless for a second or two and then said,"But why would you want to do that?" So then I felt obliged to explain that Olivier had actually left the marital home for now but I was hoping against hope that he would come back. I was a little embarrassed as I felt like he might think that in that case I was wasting his time being there. But then he asked incredulously, "So you would have a baby without your husband?" I have to admit to being slightly stunned by his attitude, when in my Anglo-Saxon world I read about women doing this all the time. He quite simply could not believe that I would even consider doing that. And then he went on to tell me that such things do not exist in France and that, especially considering my age, it would never be allowed. To say I left his office in a slight state of shock would be an understatement! Ladies - can you believe this?!

I have so much to say about this mysoginistic Gallic attitude (sorry French male readers!), I don't know where to start. But I think I'll just inform you, where in the UK kind, conscientious and modern husbands choose to have a vasectomy as their married couple's form of contraception (18% of men between 16-69 have a vasectomy in the UK), that vasectomies were ILLEGAL in France until 1999 (http://www.connexionfrance.com/getting-vasectomy-in-france-only-legal-since-1999-11041-news-article.html) and leave you to make your own conclusions as to their attitude towards women and the French male fear, quite literally, of impotence.

Needless to say, I am feeling extremely depressed after this hugely negative meeting. I oddly feel like I have lost William all over again. It's not like I thought I could ever make a new William, but the hope of being able to have another baby was one thing that I had latched onto to keep me lurching through this deep grief at losing my baby boy. This has set me back a few steps; sent me crashing to the bottom of another wave where I was riding up and surfing along a medium-sized crest for a while there. I am feeling my 'aloneness' more acutely today - the loss of everyone important in my life except Izzy. The fact that despite my 'progress', I struggle to get through every day, and yet I am the one expected to approach/apologise/make amends to these people that should have been there to support me and weren't. I am so, so sad about this.

Thank goodness my good friend of nearly 30 years, Sean, arrived yesterday.  Good company and distraction (and having three children himself, he is SO good with Izzy). If I was in the house on my own I would be doing a lot more crying than I am doing - I think it would have been a shutters down and sofa day. As it is, Sean is up demolishing the old blue bathroom with a jack-hammer in his hand so I have been able to weep a bit without him hearing, but this morning when Alex, my builder, was here too, I had to be chipper with them and make builders' tea and butties which kept me drier-eyed. So this afternoon my blog has come to my rescue again to focus me and download.

Here are some photos of our little explorer - oh the boundaries he pushed! Love you William xxx