Good news for one, bad news for another and feeling mean.

As my next post says, I still feel the sting of other peoples effortless conceptions. To keep things in perspective I remind myself it's not a race, a competition etc. But what happens when it's my little (3 1/2 years younger) sister? Well it's something I'd anticipated in a year or two...but not now! Not 8 short weeks behind me...I still can't quite believe it.

Like all the other-people's-pregnancies I've dealt with, it's good news on one level but on another it touches a raw nerve. After a few days of feeling physically sick and beating myself up for feeling physically sick I realised what it was that bothered me about it.
1. That it was a shock. She had just moved in with a new boyfriend a month before the surprise BFP with a view to buying a flat and maybe talking about getting married in a year or two. I just didn't have time to brace myself for this news.
2. I'm terrified that I'm living abroad, far from friends and family and N is in Asia for 2 weeks when the baby will be just 4 weeks old. I had planned to treat my sister to a flight and holiday during that time for support and to spend time together. Now she will be 36 weeks pregnant so that's not happening. Her enthusiasm and support in becoming an Auntie just seems to have been swept away too.
3. I now realise that my sister wasn't using contraception and so the BFP could have occurred sooner. She was already 6 weeks pregnant when she finally peed on a stick. She had no idea when AF was due. Can you imagine the two week wait passing you by unnoticed ...subtract 2 more weeks of anxiety as well?! I'm very envious indeed! Ignorance is bliss as they say.
4. Daft as it may sound, I felt enormous pressure (though my Mum has never put pressure on me) to produce the first Grandchild and I felt equal relief this FET worked. I looked forward to passing my baby to my Mum's arms for her to experience something unique too. Now she will hold my sister's baby first in February (my Mum can't fly) and I will miss the whole thing too of course and no doubt see it all float by on good old Facebook.
5. Worst part. My sister decided at 9 weeks, just 5 days before I was due to land in the UK that she wanted to tell my Mum and I begged her to wait til I'd arrived and just sat with Mum for an hour an caught up before she called and dropped the bombshell but she didn't. It's a moment I'll never get back and the I feel my pregnancy had become half of 'the pregnancies' before I'd even landed.

I can see this from a rational point of view and that my Sister is still lovely and none of this is deliberate. But even the other IVF support group I told last week came out with all the cliches I'm enduring here in the UK...
-'oooh cousins...they can share every moment' (well no I live 1000s of miles away and actually I don't want to share)
-'ooh an Auntie....you must be so excited' (nope, I don't have the capacity for that amidst anxieties and hormones but it was something I had really looked forward to in the future).
We're both in a similar place in our life but in fact even further apart as we are both looking after number one which sounds daft but it's true.

As my friend said last week when I told her..."oh **...shit"...perfect reaction. Yes, it's great, I wouldn't wish IF on my sister and when I've safely delivered this growing baby and settled a bit I will have the capacity to be a good Auntie...but right now...I just wish this could have happened in 2012. Of course, I still realise how lucky I am after the journey N and I had to get here too!

One month on...

It's coming up for a month since my last post and since the last ILCW, my second and only successful attempt at joining up with some more bloggers. I really enjoyed linking up with people and following the blogs since but I feel I have enough now and prefer quality over quantity. I want to be able to reply to all the comments I receive and to have time to read and really read the blogs I follow. I must confess I only stuck to the rules for 2 days and stopped before it felt too much to manage properly. I think I will leave my blog as before...where I welcome anyone new who stumbles across it.

During ILCW in July, I read more than one post from people having treatment to TTC  for the first time who felt frustrated at the number of pregnancy blogs around. I remember looking for other blogs where people were at the same stage as me over the past year and being disappointed too. I can understand their frustration.

This confirmed that I don't want my blog to become a pregnancy blog, with posts about which pushchair to buy or letting off steam during moments of frustration through this journey. This just doesn't feel like the place to do that. Regardless of how it may or may not affect my blog's audience I want to stick to the original theme. This is now a pregnancy after IF blog and there are issues that come up around this. They bubble to the surface when I log on and I feel I want to share them with my readers who have experience of IF.

I have decided to move over to my expat blog for more general issues but to return here to vent about IF related issues...there are a few I can tell you! I have a little back log of posts I want to write. I'm rushing all over the place back in the UK but each time I have a moment I want to return here.