Infertility & the unfairness of life

Last night I cried myself to sleep.

At the beginning of this year, one of our goals was to get this baby thing sorted out. When we were at my gynae last year, she told us that 45% is due to the female, 45% due to the male and about 10% unexplained.

We naturally assumed that I was the problem since I've had endometriosis for 4 years, and here we are 2 laparoscopies later. (those details are for another blog post). Anyway, my dh decided to get a spermogram to "rule him out".

It didn't. He has enough men, they swim well but their morphology is not good. In plain and simple English (why do doctors always complicate things?!), their heads are not pointy enough to penetrate the egg. Can be caused by smoking (he doesn't), drinking (he doesn't) or stress (he is the most laid-back person on the face of the planet).

So she gave us the number of a fertility specialist and suggested we just go straight to him.

Of course, we are in total denial so we carry on practising and believing God every month that I will get pregnant. And every month, my breasts get tender, my tummy starts the pms swell and I get my period.

DH decided to go get another spermogram and yesterday's when he phoned for the results. Same story - morphology is completely messed up and the doctor says "there is no way you two will ever be able to have a baby naturally". thanks for the positive message


This is conveyed in a very matter-of-fact tone, like we're talking about how it's a rainy day or something.

I don't think I can deal with the unfairness of it all. My friend C says "some people just seem to pop them out like Smarties" which just sums it up. Everywhere I look I see women pregnant and glowing, and gorgeous babies everywhere. I don't begrudge them (or only a little bit). I just feel like it's soooo unfair. I would make such a good mother. Promise. Everyone says so!

So last night is when it seemed to sink in. I might never be a mother.

Tarantism (TAR-uhn-tiz-uhm) noun - an uncontrollable urge to dance

There we have it, people - an official word for my condition!

And this condition takes the form of almost every kind of dance - currently there is belly dancing on a Saturday, hip hop dancing on a Monday and my absolute favourite, salsa dancing on a Wednesday.

I've been a bit under the weather this week so I didn't go to my usual Monday class. I still am not 100% better but I am so much better than I was earlier this week.

But here's the thing - nothing, and I mean nothing, keeps me from that class. So I dressed warm to brave the 12 degrees Celsius cold and went for it. And of course, I loved every minute of it.

Some people don't know this about me but I've been dancing since I was 4 - ballet, modern, spanish - and I absolutely love performing. [This is also probably why I love talking to huge groups of people when I do workshops and such.] All that practice in the studio is all worthwhile when there is an audience, a stage, and that curtain rises. Oooh - there's nothing like it for me. (I do know different things do it for different people).

I tell you - it's the exhibitionist in me.

not 1, but 6 blocks of chocolate

Why is it that I seem to sabotage my weight-loss success?

I weigh in on Thursdays and it seems like every Tuesday or Wednesday I make a stupid decision.

Like yesterday! The whole day I did really well - ate nothing that wasn't allowed and then last night at 11pm when I was making my last cup of coffee, I had a sudden craving for chocolate.

Do I take one block? No - once an overachiever, always an overachiever.

I had to have 6! But boy, was that chocolate good!

I must, I must, I must delay gratification

This weight loss journey is not for sissies.

I've been doing relatively well (I'm always cautious about sounding too optimistic just in case the scale doesn't agree) this week. Of course, D and I had our date night on Friday. Went out for a lovely Indian meal. I tried to eat healthily by focusing on my salad first and then trying to estimate what a "normal" portion would be.

I have no excuses for Saturday. After church, I decided that I needed a Wimpy or Milky Lane coffee (I don't drink any other coffees besides theirs). Of course, we didn't end there. We also had savoury waffles and a fight with the waitress.

There was a big promotional poster saying free coffee with every savoury waffle, and of course, they billed us for both the waffles and the coffees. Long story short, manager was called and we paid for what they advertised.

The food diary works well when I remember to write in it... of course, it didn't help that I baked some muffins on Sunday. The good news is I limited myself to only one. But the gorgeous smell of baking? All I can say is yummmmmmmmmm.

I am clearly learning some self-control.

Nothing tastes as good as thin feels, nothing tastes as good as thin feels...

I am SO easy to please

Yesterday I was driving home from work.

I travel along a very busy street with hundreds of other type-A personality drivers. [Notice I admit that I'm just like the rest of them] It's like survival of the fittest although instead of a jungle, it's only Louis Botha Avenue.

If you, by any chance, get stuck behind a taxi driver who just stops without indicating, or a turning car, and your reflexes are just the tiniest bit off, that's it.

You will sit there in your car waiting and waiting until the road is clear again because nobody, and I mean NOBODY (not even I) will let you into the traffic flow again. Although to be honest, the cars whizz by at such a speed that you actually don't want to venture out at those low speeds.

Anyway, back to my story. So I'm driving behind a huge 4X4 so I can't see the road in front of me. Suddenly the 4x4 swerves into the next lane and I see why, but I'm just fractions of a second too late to do anything about it.

A taxi has just stopped without any indication. What's new?!

But then... a miracle happens.

I turn on my indicators to get back in the traffic and a car actually slows down, flicks his lights at me (which is Jhb-speak for "move it and get in front of me before I change my mind").

I was stunned beyond belief but I thanked him and moved to the right lane.

As I drove off, I felt so good about this random act of kindness that I smiled and waved to him again.

Now that was a good start to the weekend and it absolutely made my day!

I'm on the weight loss wagon again...

I joined weigh-less in March this year with 7,2kg to goal.

I lost the first 4,6 slowly but steadily and then I hit a plateau. Then it was up 0.2, down 0.2, then the same, down 0.4 up 0.8. That type of thing.

This has been going on for about 6 - 8 weeks now and today when I weighed in, up 0.4. Now I have 3.2 to go before I reach goal.

I've been trying to think about why I'm battling these last few kilos. People say it's because I'm already nearly there and I don't have far to go so these last few will take some time.

I think it's because I look good in my jeans again if i say so myself and my clothes all fit comfortably.

But I need to get my almost-skinny ass in gear and up the ante.

Today I decided to start keeping a food diary. It is remarkable how just writing something down makes you think before you eat it. It's almost like a time log - I remember years ago filling in my first one before a time management course. The first few days you just carry on as normal but on day 3, suddenly you start auto-correcting.

Do I really want to waste time on the internet because I'll have to write that down? (thank goodness that was in the pre-blog days)

I really hope the food diary works because I need to get to goal before bikini season. Not that you'll ever catch me dead in one (I'm just not the exhibitionist type) but I'd like to know I could if I wanted to.

Verdict - Day 1. No cheats except for 2 wine gums.

My 100 things - part 1

I figured the only way I would get these 100 things done was to do them in stages, so here is part 1


1.I am 32 years old
2.I feel 18 most of the time and only remember my age when I try to show off in dance class.
3.I have brown hair and eyes, am 1,58m tall and weigh 54 kg.
4.My weight goal is 52kg.
5.I have been having bad hair years for the last 4 years at least!
6.It annoys me so much when people tell me that I should blow dry my hair.
7.I usually tell them that there are better things to do or that my lifestyle doesn't support that.
8.I go to gym three times a week and to wash and blow dry hair after each session is just a bit much.
9.My best physical features are my legs.
10. This is probably due to all the ballet in my youth.
11. I started doing ballet when I was 4 years old and stopped in my last year of school.
12. I also did 4 years of modern jazz dancing.
13. And another 4 years of spanish dancing after I saw one spanish dance routine and I was hooked.
14. I won a choreography competition when I was about 10 years old. I felt like a bit of a fraud for winning because I made up the dance on the spot. Too many things on my plate, even then J
15. After I left school, I only started dancing again 13 years later in 2004.
16. I started off with dance funk, which I liken to Britney Spears type stuff.
17. Then I had about a year of contemporary dance – a lot like ballet.
18. And now I'm belly dancing, hip hop dancing and my ultimate favourite, salsa dancing.
19. This is the only way I would get in my exercise except for some weight work I do at home in front of the TV.
20. I'm quite health-conscious and try to eat correctly about 90% of the time.
21. My absolute favourite drink is water.
22. After that, it's decaf coffee. Caffeinated coffee gives me heart palpitations.
23. My favourite fruit is the granny smith apple – bright green, crisp and sour to taste. Yum.
24. I love anything with apples – apple pie, muffins, pancakes, cakes, etc.
25. Another of my favourite things is custard. It instantly makes me feel good. This could be due to the fact that my gran used to make me custard whenever I wasn't feeling well when I was little.
26. My favourite yoghurt is custard, and then vanilla.
27. I definitely take vanilla flavoured anything over chocolate.
28. I only eat Cadbury's chocolate.
29. I have been married for 11 years.
30. We married when I was 20!
31. I am in a bi-racial marriage. Of course we don't even notice this until we get "the stares". Then I think it's cool J
32. A part of me loves freaking people out.
33. Because of this young age, a lot of my family thought I was pregnant.
34. I wasn't J
35. We don't have any kids yet.
36. For a long, long time, children were not even on my "radar". I started thinking about having them when I turned 30.
37. I spent so many years trying not to fall pregnant. Did I waste all those years of birth control?!
38. We've been "trying" to have a baby since I turned 30. Had a break for 6 months last year as I'd just started at my current job.
39. I'm originally from a coastal city, Port Elizabeth, which is a really laid-back place where everybody knows everybody else's business.
40. My mother and father still live there, although not together as they got divorced about 4 years ago.
41. I am the eldest child and they tell me I am typical in this respect. I'm sure they mean it as a bad thing.
42. Both of my siblings still live in my home town.
43. My sister is 5 years younger than I am and has been married since 2004. They also don't have any kids yet.
44. My brother is 12 years younger than I am and is still living at home and doing his degree in media studies.
45. I now live in Joburg and have been here since May 1993.
46. I moved up here to be with my boyfriend, who is now my husband.
47. He is 4 years older than I am.
48. The best part of our relationship is the fact that we can communicate about anything.
49. The worst thing is we're both very stubborn.
50. We love reading and going to bookshops.
51. We have a date night twice every month.The things I love most about him is that he is hugely supportive of me, loving and affectionate, and is my rock!

Look out for part 2 in a few days' time.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

Last Sunday 6th August I celebrated (please understand that I use this word very loosely) my 32nd birthday.

It was actually a really pathetic day for the following reasons:

1. my husband acted like it was a normal day until about 12 when he gave me my presents. At this I promptly burst out crying, shocking and scaring the poor man senseless. In my mind, he'd forgotten about me and put me right at the bottom of the priority list. He says that he was waiting for me to get out of the bedroom for long enough so that he could get the stuff out of hiding. That reason just didn't do it for me - sorry!
2. I only got 2 calls (friend and mother-in-law) and then another one later from my dad. I switched my phone to silent so didn't actually speak to the first two because I just couldn't bear to talk to people. How sad is that! By the time my dad phoned at about 6pm, I'd cheered up a bit so I actually answered the call.
3. Got 9 sms messages and that's it. I actually find SMS from close people a bit rude.

The reason I was so disappointed is because I am the ultimate thoughtful person, especially where birthdays are concerned. I do the whole present and card thing, and either email or phone, depending on how close I am to the person.

Not only that but I have a really wide network of people who, I used to think, were quite close with me. By the way, the same thing happened last year. I am clearly a very slow learner.

Clearly I'm a person who needs some affirmation of love or something.

P.S. It got a bit better the next day at work. I got a couple of gifts and email from the work crowd. Then again, I took in some muffins - raisin & bran, plain bran, spicy orange & chocolate for the masses so maybe I was buying their love?!

welcome...and all that jazz

I'm starting this blog to be totally anonymous.

How weird is that? Anonymous but all over the internet. Call me crazy. The thing is I have some business blogs out there already and I find that I have to edit what I want to say so I don't have true freedom of speech :)

I think the difference is that this time around I won't post my full name or picture and I won't link to the other blogs.

My word but how I struggled to find a blogger name that wasn't already used. I went through almost all the words that describe me... and still nothing.

I almost went for leighloveslife but didn't want to sound too upbeat because the truth is that it's not always rosy, is it?

Eventually I decided on leighloveslists because I really do love lists and the name was available. Big plus!

Anyway, busy working on my 100 things list so will post that soon