Where are Jonny and Flo going for their weekend break?

Booking a long weekend away just before you are about to move house may seem a bit silly. Or at least not very well-planned. In our case, it is of course neither! :-)

Months and months ago, we thought we deserved a long weekend away after we'd moved. Instead of a summer holiday. So when KLM had a promotion where we could use airmiles to fly for a discounter price to Copenhagen, we thought we'd take the opportunity.

As it turns out, we have not moved yet. We also had to put up with the ludicrously high airport taxes, making the ticket price same as normal. Neither did we anticipate Jonny going to Russia. But one day at home should cover any possible jetlag?

We are leaving on Friday, back on Sunday. Just in time to pack some personal belongings so we can find those back in the inevitable mess the first days in our new house.

Nothing reduces our anticipatory pleasure though! We are very much looking forward to seeing the Danish capital, meet the Danes, buy some Danish design and, most of all, to spend some time together.

Our second round of IVF-ICSI: what's next?

Last week I spoke to the doctor that performed our last IVF cycle. She said that they only have a telephone evaluation after a failed IVF treatment if the patients ask the nurses too many difficult questions about it. Yeah, that sounds like me! :-)

Why did it go wrong? Unfortunately nobody knows why succesfully fertilised embryos don't implant. Something in nature has decided that these implanted embryos are not viable, most likely because of a genetic or chromosomal defect. We might simply have been a bit unlucky.

Could the laporoscopy have influenced the outcome? When women start IVF soon after a delivery or after an operation on the ovaries, it can happen that the ovaries do not respond like they otherwise would. During an operation also healthy tissue is removed and that can mess about with hormone levels, negatively influencing the outcome. Given our history, it seems most likely that I don't have a large stock of egg cells though.

Is there something wrong with me? There is nothing wrong with me, other than not having a large stock of egg cells. Normally this would not have been a problem and we would not have even noticed. Because we rely on IVF and the hyperstimulation that goes with it, it is a bit unfortunate. A small consolation is that quality is more important than quantity.

When can we have another go? She suggested having an ultrasound on the third day of the next cycle and determine my FSH levels. The FSH level determines how many egg cells will grow during an IVF cycle. As a general rule, the lower the better, as it rises when a woman approaches menopause. This is something they want to rule out (although there is no real reason to suspect it). This would mean starting stimulation again the beginning of November.

What will we do differently? To give us the best possible chance, they suggest to do the long protocol again. That would mean we have a rest this cycle. Next cycle on day three I start on the Pill.

Huh, the Pill? But we want to get pregnant? The pill regulates the growth of the follicles a bit more. Instead of having one very enthusiastic follicle, they are much more likely to all be the same size. So by the time they are ready to be harvested, they are all ripe enough to be fertilised.

How do we feel? Still a wee bit sad at times, but mainly looking forward to the next try. We can now fully concentrate on the new house, appreciate some IVF-free time and I can enjoy my occasional glass of wine!

Counting the days

I am counting the days before Jonny comes back: 2. The closer it gets to him coming home the more I miss him. That must have to do with how you adjust the internal clock to a certain number of days. There is enough to get on with though: organising stuff for the new house, tidying up the old house and throwing away stuff we don't need anymore. The latter by the way deserving a post of its own! How much stuff does one accumulate? Let alone two people...

I am counting the days before we move house: 7. Although a lot has been done, the house is not nearly finished yet. But we have a working shower, a temporary counter top in the kitchen and working heaters. We can live in it!



At the weekend I have painted the pantry, moving away from the still 'rustic' feel that was in there. We can now hang some shelves for our cans and containers. Today and tomorrow the wooden floors are being put in, the concrete in the front will get an epoxy coating later this week and my adorable new door stoppers will be attached too.

It is so exciting that we are now almost moving in to our new house. The first time that we will actually live in our own house! We can now happily fill the wall with nails (if we wanted to) and paint it any colours we like (in case we get bored of our carefully chosen palette). We have both done so much and are really proud of how it is coming together. It goes to show what a good team can do. Just waiting for my team mate to come back now! :-)

Travels in the Sea of Okhotsk

Most people wonder what the hell I get up to on my adventures away from home, so I thought I’d write a quick post to give a snapshot of a day in the life of a well engineer (plus I had my camera so was able to take a few pictures to illustrate).

Yesterday was a long day of travel. At around 10am I left my temporary home 16km off the coast of Sakhalin island in the sea of Okhotsk, where I’d been living on a man made island of steel and sand called the Molikpaq. I was transported onto a crew boat via a special basket that is lifted from the deck of the platform onto the deck of the boat via one of the platform’s cranes; if you look closely at the picture below you can just about make it out on the right of the picture as a small yellow pyramid shaped object. Fortunately, it’s not too cold this time of the year, but I still had to wear a thickly padded orange survival suit to protect me from the cold wind and from the icy water should an accident occur and I fell into the sea. The basket is hanging about 30 meters above sea level, so it’s quite a fall is something goes wrong, but fortunately i was safely strapped in.


It takes about four hours for the boat to navigate from the platform to the nearest port, but on the way we stopped off at another vessel called the Jaya Installer 5 to pick up some more passengers. This vessel is a floating hotel with accommodation for about 300 people. It carries out support work for the installation of offshore platforms and is currently carrying out welding operations for Exxon oil company (who operate a similar platform out here called the Orlan).

I spoke to one of the departing passengers and he informed me that the welders are currently working on a pipeline. It’s a tough job, since the divers spend two weeks in a pressurised environment. To weld underwater, they construct a tent on the seabed, approximately 30 meters beneath the surface. After a 12 hour shift, they return to the surface, but have to stay in a small pressured tank to prevent decompression problems. This way, they only have to compress and decompress once during their hitch; they compress when they start and then at then once at the end of their two-week hitch they decompress to re-join the rest of the world. Spending this much time in such a claustrophobic environment would send most people insane!

There’s not an awful lot to see on the way except for an occasional seagull following the wake of the boat looking for food.

The end of the sea journey is marked with the arrival at the port of… (sorry, I'm crap at remembering names, particularly Russian ones) a battered, bleak, run down little port with signs that it was once a major oil export terminal judging by the numerous rusty old oil depots littering its perimeter.


After saying farewell to the crew boat (I’ve never been a big fan of crew boats after being forced to endure three days on one, unable to disembark due to rough sea conditions… I lost about 5kg in weight during those three days and earned the nickname “the jolly green giant” on account of the change in colour of my complexion), so I was not sad to be back on terra firma.

Here’s a picture of the crew boat. Mine was the one in the background, affectionately named “Miss Sybil”. The one in the foreground was similarly named “Miss Vickie”, perhaps after an old college friend of mine who coincidentally is now a teacher, so shares the “Miss” prefix also. Life’s full of coincidences (if you look for them).

After a quick stop over at a base camp in Nogliki (a sterile, characterless place, also enough to send one insane if having to spend anything length of time there) to pick up my passport (never get caught in Russia without your passport!), it was off to the train station to catch the overnight train back to Yuzhno.

Similar to the port, the train station appears to have seen better days, since, as is the fashion in this part of the world, machinery that has come to the end of its useful life is left to unceremoniously rot away in an open grave. At least these abandoned train carriages are now being utilised by a young family of dogs, who have sensibly chosen the less decrepit of the two carriages to be their home.


No expenses are spared on the train travel, as we are treated to relative luxury having our own carriage with 4 berth sleeper cabins. Fortunately, I’ve only ever had to share a cabin with one other person, which is actually a blessing since it gives the opportunity for some human contact on what is otherwise a very lonely experience.

This time, I shared my cabin with a local inhabitant of Yuzhno, who gave me an insight into the way of life in the area. Despite their somber appearance, Russians have an inherent sense of good humor; they are very aware that they live in a tough environment, but are very tolerant and accepting of it and are content just to survive.

As Flo has taken to point out recently, we live in a generation where we expect an awful lot out of life, like it’s our birthright. It’s not until I return to relative civilization back at my hotel when I realize how lucky I am to be able to call my loved ones and catch up life back at home with a half our chat with my wife.

Where's Jonny?

In case anyone's wondering why I've not been posting with my usual fevor, it's because I'm currently stuck out here.


This picture is a bit exagerated... it's not frozen up at the moment, but there's not many pictures of this place on the internet, so this will have to do. The place has also grown a bit since this picture was taken too... it grows rather organically this place, sprouting lumps and bumps all over and walking around inside it is like walking through the insides of huge monster. I'll see if I can get a nicer picture of it as I leave tomorrow.

If you're wondering where this thing is, you can read a bit about it here. I've only spent a couple of nights out here, heading back tomorrow... 4 hours in a boat followed by 15 hours on a train to get to back to town.

Meanwhile, Flo's left at home, sorting out bills, painters, builders, plumbers etc and dealing with our recent set-back all on her own (well, physically at least, since I often think about her). I think I've actually got the easy option in comparison... so sorry Flo! Promise I'll make it up to you when I'm back! I do appreciate all the hard work that you're doing, I hate not being there with you and most importantly, I love you very much!

A fine day to spend in the pool

August has been lousy in the weather department, so you would think that surely put us first on the list for a really beautiful Indian summer. Or at least a few days of Indian summer...

Today was one of those days and where better to catch the last rays of hot summer sun than in a puddle pool? Or, in my case, watching my nieces splatter around in it. I spent the time talking to my sister enjoying a glass of beautiful French rosé. Nice!

Wine, food and retail therapy

Before we started the second round of IVF, we were well aware that there was a chance of the treatment not working out again. The chance of getting pregnant with IVF (ICSI) are quite slim. Yet we chose to keep positive throughout it and deal with the emotions when the time was there. That worked for us.

Men and women deal differently with emotions, so also with a failed IVF cycle . Men - I am well aware that I am generalising here - talk about it once and feel they have dealt with it. They find it of limited value to go over the whole thing again and again. We compromised: we agreed that we would talk about it for no more than three days and then move on.

I used these three days for crying my eyes out. We used these three days for feeling truly sorry for ourselves, talking to each other and doing some serious comfort eating and drinking. Jonny told me that drinking a whole bottle of wine would probably not make me feel better, but most likely worse. One glass of nice red wine was divine though, after almost a month of prohibition.

A serious bout of retail therapy finished off the mourning period. Not only do I have almost my complete winter wardrobe ready, but we are ready to move on. It is okay now. We will be okay. Looking forward to enjoying some September sun today and meeting up with our friend Miffy, who we have not seen for ages.

We loved the kind emails, sweet phone calls, the warm thoughts and prayers, crossed fingers and good energy we got from you throughout and after the treatment. Thanks for that, it did us good! We certainly hope there is a lot more where that came from since we might be needing some more soon.

A slow-motion shock

When we first found out that we could only have children through IVF-ICSI, I thought that little problem (no pun intended) could be solved by doing a treatment. Once. For my generation the adagio is: throw enough energy and money at a problem and it will be solved. So I was over-optimistic about the treatment working the first time.

When it didn't I was devastated. I hit a particularly bad period, where the sadness, pain and bitterness threatened to consume me. I entered a dark place and felt alone and helpless and hopeless. Jonny didn't know how the deal with me and I didn't know how to deal with his emotions. We nearly lost each other in the process.

It took a long time for us to find each other back and pluck up the courage to have another go. This time we took a little more control: we ate and lived healthily, I had acupuncture before and during the treatment, we took loads of bloody expensive supplements. Also, we had a laugh throughout the process, joking about the needles, the hormones, the small disappointments. In all, we did what we could.

Despite all our best efforts it turns out that the second time has not worked either. Earlier this week the good (physical) feeling had suddenly gone and the mental feeling soon followed. Yesterday morning I lost some blood. There are all sort of possible explanations why you could lose blood and be pregnant. Unfortunately they don't apply to me. I am now waiting for my period to start properly.

It is bloody hard. It sucks, it is bloody unfair. We are going to be sad, to have a good cry, to shout, to feel very sorry for ourselves. For a bit. Then we'll put our chins up and be brave and strong again. Knowing that there is nothing that we could have done differently. Knowing that coming through at the other side with our relationship intact is success, not a failure. And we'll move our goals posts a little so we can carry on to reach our goal: having our own baby.

I love you Jonny!

Camping in the new bedroom

After walking around with Farrow and Ball colour swatches for months, even sleeping with them under my pillow, I finally decided to use some completely different colours for our new house. This decision was mainly driven by the fact that our painter could not mix the F&B colours. In normal words that means: it would be too expensive.

Amongst the good things of the F&B paint were the names: Elephant's Breath©, Monkey Puzzle© and our all time favourite Cooking Apple Green© for example. Our new paint does not have super dupa names, but our palette consists of four colours instead: off white, off yellow, off beige and off grey. I am not being completely fair to the dark grey, since it actually does have a name: "tent".

Although nowadays I prefer a sweet little B&B or even a swanky hotel over a tent any time, I have fond memories of the tent I used to share with my sister over family holidays. I loved the sound of rain on the tent in the early mornings. I loathed the walk to the toilets in the rain though.

So "tent" it is. A suitably apt name for the colour of our bedroom. We are well pleased with the way the colour turned out on the wall. The bedroom will be warm and cosy and soon be full of fond memories too!

Day 26: A lush hairdo

Last Saturday night, at the Sandrex' birthday/housewarming/ engagement party, I was talking about Madonna with a couple of people. We all agreed that she looks amazing at 48. The army of personal trainers, stylists, make-up artists and assistants does undoubtedly contribute to that, but she does look glamorous.

I have given up my one time ambition to be glamorous: it is just too much work! It would mean being extremely fit, not having a hair out of place, not a root showing, impeccable clothes and never having chipped nail polish. Ever! The thought alone makes me tired, so I settle for looking groomed instead.

In order to achieve this, Jonny and I both went for a pre-party haircut on Saturday. The hairdresser remarked that my hair was a lot thicker than last time. This can be good news. During early pregnancy oestrogenic hormone levels increase. This causes the normal cycle of hair growth to slow down, resulting in only about five per cent of the usual hair fall. This is why most pregnant women's hair seems so much thicker as more hairs are in active growth than usual.

According to the hairdresser, if the new thickness of my hair is anything to go by.... Unfortunately the only thing that will definitely tell us that I am pregnant is a positive pregnancy test on Friday. That is another four days! The insecurity is killing, but at least I have a lush hairdo to go with it!