#atozchallenge - D is for Dreams

Do you ever have dreams that are so vivid that when you wake up it takes a moment to realise that it's not real?

Sometimes I hate those dreams.

There's nothing worse than having a nice pregnancy dream only to wake up and realise that it's not real, or dreaming that you've got a little family and waking up and finding that the little person you were cuddling is actually the tail end of your labrador!

It can be nice to have those dreams too.

There was one night when I had a really vivid dream that we were adopting a little girl. It wasn't really something I'd thought about too much before but it started me thinking about that as an option if the IVF doesn't work.

And then there are the dreams that you just have in general; the desire to hold your newborn child, to see them going to school for the first time, making friends and having birthday parties. They're a bit more important than the dreams you have at night (and not only because they don't usually feature characters who can only speak via emoticons); they're dreams for the future and they're the ones that really count.

I'm just going to keep on dreaming a little longer.

Spring Forward, Fall Back

Here in the UK we had to adjust the clocks for Daylight Savings Time on Sunday. As per the little saying, they went forward this time; putting the clocks forward is also known as 'the bad one' because that's the one where you lose an hour.

Luckily, thanks to Easter coming early this year, we had an extra day off to get used to it. I usually adjust fairly quickly but when the alarm goes off at 7am I can't help but think 'this time last week it was 6am'.

Mr Click's dad has a story about a friend who moved their clocks in the wrong direction and ended up two hours out. In fact, when we both got our iPhones last year I couldn't remember if they did it automatically; we normally adjust our clocks the night before when we're going to bed, I was worried about waking up and not knowing what had changed automatically.

At least this time of year means we can make sure all of the clocks show roughly the same time. I normally have the bedroom alarm clock set ten or fifteen minutes fast to give us snoozing time in the morning, but it gradually gains a bigger gap between its time and the actual time. Before we reset it there was a gap of about twenty-five minutes between it and my phone!

At least now the mornings are getting lighter earlier and the evenings are staying lighter for longer. Won't be long before we're at the longest day of the year, and before we know it, those clocks will be falling back again!

#atozchallenge - C is for Charting

When you’re trying for a baby, aside from the obvious, it feels like there’s not very much you can do to control when it’ll happen. But within the first few months of trying ‘seriously’ you pick up little things that you can do to get a better idea of what’s going on in your body.

One of these is known as ‘charting’. This basically involves taking your temperature each morning as soon as you wake up, before you get out of bed even, and plotting it on a little chart. This allows you to track any changes in your body temperature which is useful for working out exactly when ovulation occurs. When you ovulate your body temperature will raise slightly and when this shift occurs you can pinpoint the date of ovulation.

This can lead to a bit of fun first thing in the morning. Picture the scene: the alarm goes off and you hit the snooze button, reach for your glass of water for a swig to wet your dry mouth and then your hand brushes the thermometer. You fumble to remove it from its case, pop it in your mouth, wonder why it isn’t beeping, realise that you’ve not actually turned it on yet and press the magic button that brings it to life.

You start to doze again only to be woken up by the shrill beeping of the thermometer. Then you’ve got to try and read the numbers through your bleary eyes, if you’re sensible you’ll have turned the lamp on before you try doing this; if you’re lucky your thermometer will have a backlight on it. If you’re anything like me you’ll make a ‘mental note’ of the temperature, turn the thermometer off and then panic because you can’t remember if that was ‘.50’ or ‘.20’. Most thermometers will remember the last temperature when you turn them back on; if you’re anything like me, this will be a lifesaver.

Then is the fun bit of plotting it on the chart. I quite like doing this and joining all the lines up as the month goes on. It’s interesting to see when the shift occurs, particularly if you’re combining this method with others because it can really help to pinpoint the exact day. You can also use sites online like Fertility Friend to keep a record of your chart and get help analysing it.

I have to admit, I don’t do this anymore. Working shifts makes it tricky because you absolutely need to take your temperature at the same time every day to get reliable results. I’d end up having to set the alarm to go off at 5am even when I was on the late shift because that was when I’d taken my temperature at the beginning of the month. Plus, once you know why you’re not getting pregnant, knowing the best time to ‘try’ doesn’t really help much.

But it’s helped me to understand exactly what’s happening in my body each month, which is useful and it meant that I could provide important information to the fertility specialist we saw last year. And lots of people swear by it, so it’s definitely something worth trying if you think it’ll work for you.

Book 11 of 2013: Dictionary of Idioms and Their Origins by Linda & Roger Flavell

This is the last book in a set of four books about the history of word and phrase origins, I say the last, but it's the last I came to read. It's actually the first to have been published but I started at the wrong end of the little display box! I wouldn't say this spoilt my reading of the series, if anything it felt like the more logical progression for the series.

Dictionary of Idioms and Their Origins looks at the history of everyday idioms in the English language and investigates what they mean, how they came to be used and how their meaning has changed over time. Each listing includes relevant quotes which demonstrate the idioms use in a variety of sources; everything from Sunday magazines to texts which are hundreds of years old.

I found this to be an interesting look at where these sayings come from. It's one of those things that I do find myself thinking about; why should you be the 'apple of one's eye'? How did that become a way of saying one person really likes another?

As I'd expected, there was a bit of an overlap between this one and the book about proverb origins. Some of the sayings were featured in both. It's unlikely you'd really notice this unless you were actually reading the books in quick succession, after all, they are designed to be reference books to dip in and out of, not to read from cover to cover as I have!

I was a bit surprised at the number of entries that didn't actually tell you where the phrase came from. Plenty of them had a good guess or gave several possible scenarios for the origins of the phrase in question. To begin with it frustrated me when I came across entries which couldn't give definite information but I guess sometimes you just can't know everything, particularly with a language like English which is constantly changing and evolving.

When I read the book about proverbs I complained that the alphabetical organisation seemed a little arbitrary. In this one it worked a lot better. I suppose that's due to the nature of idioms, they tend to have one obvious subject which can be identified as the key word for the entry. There is also an index at the back for looking up some of the more elusive ones.

I'm not sure whether this book has been updated since it was first published in 1992. It does show some signs of it's age, particularly when there's mentions of popular culture. There were also idioms which I was expecting to see, that didn't get a mention; obviously they couldn't fit everything into this book but I was surprised to see some phrases I've never even heard of before being included with a note about how they're now obsolete.

I'm definitely hanging onto this set of books for reference for the future. You never know when you might want to look up something like this, particularly if you're a linguistics geek like me. I'd definitely recommend them all as reference books, though they're a bit dry if you're wanting to read from cover to cover!

#atozchallenge - B is for Babies

This is my second post for the A to Z Challenge, so far, so good.

One thing you’ll notice, if you’re wanting to start a family, is that suddenly babies are everywhere. Whenever you turn on the TV there are adverts for baby products, sales at Asda for baby supplies and Clear Blue digital pregnancy tests (this is particularly remarkable when the only TV you have isn’t actually connected to an aerial or a dish). You go for a walk round the shops and every woman you see is either pushing a pram or has a baby bump. And your Facebook friends list suddenly explodes with people who are going to christenings or want to show off their latest scan pictures.

This condition doesn’t get any easier with time. Trust me.

Even now I can’t walk past Mothercare without wanting to go in and look at the teeny tiny little booties, or check out the cribs to imagine where in the bedroom we might put one. What’s worse is when you do actually go in and the women in there look at you like they’re trying to work out how far along you are. Ikea is another good place because they’ve got all those funky nursery and children’s bedroom furniture; I must’ve redesigned our nursery half a dozen times in the last few years.

I like to think that, mentally at least, I’m quite prepared for a baby. At least in terms of furniture and clothes. I’ve not actually purchased any of those supplies yet (apart from some teeny tiny booties which are buried in a bag in the wardrobe), I feel like anything else would be unlucky. At least when the time comes, I know exactly where the best bargains can be had!

Happy Easter

Easter is ridiculously early this year. I always used to have this rule where I wouldn't eat my last Easter Egg until my birthday, but as my birthday is at the end of April this year it'll be tricky. Especially now I'm grown up I only get one egg.

Actually, this year my in-laws bought Mr Click and me a fancy Easter Egg to share, so perhaps that'll help make saving a bit of chocolate until my birthday slightly easier.

Last Easter we had a marathon of Harry Potter films which was good fun. I'd hoped to do the same thing this year but we've still not seen all of Dancing On The Edge, so we've chosen that as our viewing material of the weekend.

There'll also be extra days spent at my in-laws', lots of chocolate and plenty of long lie ins.

How've you spent your Easter weekend?

#atozchallenge - A is for Acronyms

And so it starts.

The A to Z Challenge, that is (for the purposes of Twitter I'm posting a hastag in the post title). This is my first A to Z Challenge and I decided to set myself the theme of Infertility, coincidentally, National Infertility Awareness falls in the last full week of April (ending on my birthday, ironically).

One of the first things you discover when you decide that you want to start a family, particularly if it's taking you a little while to get results, is that you've got to learn a whole new language. When you start hanging out on the TTC forums, everyone speaks in weird abbreviations. People long for a BFP and mourn when they get a BFN, you learn far too much about CM, stock up on OPKs and HPTs, and share too much information about when you DtD.

Most good websites and forums have a helpful little guide to help you understand what each of these terms means. The better ones don't use them at all and actually use plain English, which is a hell of a lot easier to follow.

It's one of those things you get used to as time goes on, but in the beginning it's a big reminder that once you start trying to have a baby, you're entering a whole new world!