Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Wishing you good food, joyful company and few but thoughtful presents. Have a good one!

Taking the baby project to Belgium

We have a plan. We are taking the baby project to Belgium. In January we have an appoinment at the university hospital in Gent. For a second opinion and maybe even to do the treatment there.

It is a little bit out of the way. But after getting the kitchen in England and the cats in Friesland, we think nothing of making our baby in Belgium.

I chose the hospital in Gent because they have experience with treating low responders. In general Belgian hospitals are more technically advanced and they are willing to try out more and different things. That might just be the right approach for our case.

To get in the mood we have another "matinette" at breakfast. Little thin slices of chocolate, that Belgians eat like we eat our hagelslag. But posher. There is a certain joie de vivre about the whole breakfast experience.

It feels good to have a plan. And it is almost January.

Thinking about it

We have not written about le projet néné a lot lately. Also between ourselves there are days that we don't talk about it. In fact sometimes days go by without us mentioning babies. Days that we are too busy with work, the house or simply our day to day lives. However, it does not mean it is not on our minds. There is just not a lot that we can say about it, other than all the things we have said a thousand times before. It is enough to know that the other thinks about it.

Seventy boxes down, ten to go

Or something like that... We have definitely unpacked a lot of boxes in the last few months and we are slowly getting to the last one.

The main reason for not having unpacked everything yet, boils down to simply not having enough space to put the contents away. Which really seems a bit strange, considering we live in a bigger house than we did before.

I contribute that to the lack of built-in cupboards and not at all to the fact that we seem to find other stuff to do than unpack boxes, organise the house and paint the woodwork... Add the fact that we seem to have a rather high tolerance for mess and you get the picture.

However, there are moments that we think that we really need to get a move on. The knowledge that we will have twelve dinner guests for Christmas for example. So yesterday Jonny installed the new glass shelves above our pimped dresser.

Beautiful glass shelves imported from England. Long live the internet and mail order. They hold all our cups, glasses, teas and drinks perfectly. It looks like we have a little bar in our kitchen. An organised little bar for that matter. We are well pleased with it!

My first Christmas hamper

When I was little, my dad used to get a Christmas hamper from work. On the day he brought it home, I eagerly waited for him, excited with anticipation.

He was always sweet enough to let me, the youngest child, help him unwrap the package and scrutinize the contents. The box of After Eight! The jar of paté! The Christmas napkins! Regardless of the contents always being sort of predictable, I thought it was so much fun!

Now I am all grown-up (well, sort of) and today I got my first very own Christmas hamper. Not bad after only a week at my new job! It was good fun opening it, but the contents remain unopened for the time being. Our stomachs are still a bit feeble after the mussel adventure...

Don't force things- especially closed mussels

My paternal grandmother was born in the Dutch province of Zeeland, the coastal province famous for it's oysters and mussels. She loved all fish and seafood. Her love for oysters skipped a generation, but both my dad and me like mussels.

Add the fact that Jonny mentioned only last weekend that I never make mussels. Pronto, enough reasons to make Zeeuwse mussels for the alternative Sinterklaas dinner with my parents. We did last Tuesday. We are all still struggling with the aftermath.

We all know not to open closed mussels when cooked. And ALL mussel recipes stress the fact that mussels that don't close when washed should not be cooked. Let alone be eaten. That is true, very true indeed. In fact, it is one of life's important lessons.

However, the guy from the reputable fish shop in Scheveningen insisted otherwise. Upon my phone call saying there were lots of mussels that wouldn't close when washed, he said that is a widespread misconception. It is just important to not force any cooked mussels open. Or so he said. Our stomachs proved otherwise.

Funnily enough, the mussels a la bouillabaisse tasted quite nice. The effect of the little bacteria with the tongue-twisting name that came with it, was a lot less nice. The four of us got sick. Symptoms varied a bit, as did the speed at which they developed (we compared notes). I will not bore you with the exact physical details, but it was not pretty. And a bit messy.

I always thought that symptoms of food poisoning would occur within 24 hours after eating contaminated food and would only last a day or two. That must also be a widespread misconception. We still feel weak five days later. Weak and a little bit embarrassed.

Campari Light

Sounds like a sugar free, alcohol free aperative? No, it's the latest edition chezcorcutt!

After waiting weeks for delivery, they finally arrived on Saturday. We couldn't wait to go and collect them and I fitted them that evening. And here they are... courtesy of my parents who kindly donated them as our house warming gift. I hope that they will agree that they look better in real life than in the pictures... they light the kitchen perfectly and give a nice warm red glow to the rest of the room.


We're really happy with them (and so is Boris)!

Still in the running...

The older I get, the more weary I become of the medical industry. Don't get me wrong, I continue to marvel at the technological advances that continue to be forged. I'm referring more to the general competence of the middle echelons; the general practioners and consultants that interface between the medical industry and the patient.

Today, Flo and I went to visit the gynaecologist at the hospital. We went knowing that his purpose was to inform us that they wanted to discontinue our fertility treatment. Quite frankly, we were not prepared to stop. Of course, we're not prepared to give up on our dream to give birth to our own child, but this is not what is driving this decision.

Those that know me are probably aware that I'm driven predominantly by logic. I do have emotions, but I'm shit at dealing with them... almost to the point of incompetence. In certain circumstances, my emotional incompetence can be very disabling. However, my logical mind can be very useful at times and dealing with obstinate doctors is such an occasion.

The doctor's decision to discontinue our treatment was based on a number of facts and made using their professional interpretation of these facts, with a big slice of subjectivity thrown in. Unfortunately, a number of the facts on which they had made this decision were simply wrong. Most significantly (and shockingly), the doctors were of the opinion that Flo had endometriosis. This is simply not true, since the operation that Flo had recently proved that she did not have endometriosis, but instead a corpus luteum cyst. I think the gynaecologist that we saw was as shocked to discover this (despite it being in our notes) as we were to discover that he thought this.

We had quite a heated discussion with the gynecologist. We tried to determine his driver to discontinue the treatment. His response was that they didn't think it was worth continuing. We asked him why he didn't think it was worth continuing, but his only response seemed to be that this was his professional opinion. We pressed harder... asking if the decision was driven by money, medical risk or statistics. He gave a lengthy argument about it not being driven by money. Fair enough. He said that there's no evidence to suggest that the treatment has medical risks, although pointed out that there's only 22 years of data (IVF started back in the late eighties) and so there's still uncertainty here. Agreed. Then came the statistics... what I meant with that was whether the chances of success were so low that they tended to zero. However, he interpreted it as meaning the hospital's success rates and the national IVF hospital rankings, which I thought was quite telling. He said that if statistics drove the decision that they'd turn away lots of couples. The answer was suitably vague and, despite being pressed several more times, he did not give a satisfactory explanation as to what drove the decision process. I'm left thinking that the hospital would rather treat people with a higher chance of success than us and that if there was a waiting list for ICSI treatment, we'd continually be bumped to the bottom of it.

Our driver is very simple. The chance of us conceiving normally is in the region of 0.01%. This means that it's improbable that we will naturally have our own child. With ICSI treatment, the chance of us having our own child is increased in the order of a thousand times. Therefore, the chance of conceiving increases from 0.01% to something in the region of 10%.

Ask a dying man if he wants to try a very affordable procedure that has limited side effects and a 10% chance of success of leading a normal healthy lifestyle and that if it didn't work the first time, then he could keep on trying until either it worked or he ran out of time. I bet I know what he'd say (assuming that he didn't want to die).

By the end of the consultation, I think the gynaecologist agreed that there was insufficient medical evidence to discontinue the treatment yet. He therefore scheduled to see us again in two months time in order carry out some more tests to see how Flo's body is performing. He agreed that the bodies performance peaks and troughs and that Flo's body may be operating in a trough at the moment (particularly in view of the surgery that Flo recently undertook and the temporary effects that this might be having on her fertility).

The consultation ended with him taking a quick look at Flo's reproductive organs with the ultrasound scanner. I think he was quite surprised with what he saw.

The reason Flo asked to be checked out is because she's been feeling some discomfort recently. It turns out that she has a large cyst on one of her ovaries. Her good ovary in fact (not the one that was operated on, but the one that has been producing the follicles during the recent ICSI treatments). However, what surprised him was that the other ovary, the one that has been dormant recently, was now showing three or four healthy looking follicles. He also commented that Flo's endometrium was looking perfect... nice and thick. If it wasn't for the cyst, then things looked good for another ICSI attempt in fact.

The implication from this is that, if the cyst goes away, Flo could well have another three or four follicles on the ovary that currently has the cyst. Therefore, on a good cycle, it would appear that Flo is capable of producing seven or eight good follicles, which means that the chances of successful fertilisation would be back to average (around 30%).

This would therefore lend weight to one of Flo's earlier comments... maybe they're not very good at stimulating rather than Flo not reacting well to stimulation.

We left the consultation feeling very frustrated; we shouldn't have to argue with the doctors to convince them to continue with fertilisation treatment. We're fast loosing confidence with the hospital, but we're kind of happy that, despite the gynaecologist having a negative outlook when he entered the consultation, he left seemingly optimistic (although I get the distinct impression that he doen't like us... how dare we question his professional medical opinion!). We're happy that we convinced him that there's still reason to remain optimistic about continuing the treatment... there's still hope!

Lekker Hollands

A Dutch girl at heart, I like Dutch food. I don't necessarily mean pepernoten, drop and stroopwafels, although I like those too, but proper food. Nothing beats slowly stewed red cabbage with apples in the winter or double-shelled broad beans in June.

Chef cook Yolanda van der Jagt worked abroad for four years. She was one of Jamie Oliver's colleagues during his early days at the River Cafe and worked at Chez Panisse in the States. She came back here and wrote a cook book: Lekker Hollands. She likes to work with typical Dutch products and seasonal ingredients.

Her love for (preferably organic) vegetables shows in Lekker Hollands. Grilled chicory with a bacon vinaigrette, roasted hutspot with white beans, stewed leeks with aniseed.... The recipes are sort of a re-interpretation of the Dutch kitchen. Despite what cultural pessimists might say, we do have a culinary heritage we can be proud of. This books shows it.