Generosity. + 1 month.

Jon's parents gave us a cheque for Christmas that would cover a round of private fertility treatment.

Incredibly generous and I was very moved by the gesture. They made a point of telling us the money was ours to spend, as we wish, but we knew what they wanted to enable us to do.

We will go down the NHS route first. I expect. I don't think you can return to it, once you've had treatment privately. So we might use the money if the first round of treatment fails. (You only get one round on the NHS in our patch.) After all, we pay our taxes! May as well get something back.....

It's so hard to know what to do about treatment. I think you have to decide at each new stage of the journey. From here, I feel that I'd want to try a few rounds of ICSI before giving up, and if that means several thousand pounds then so be it. But who knows what I'll feel like after a longer wait in the 'system' and with more time learning to deal with the situation?

Maybe I will be determined to keep trying until I get too old. Or maybe I will become reconciled to childlessness. We'll see. I think we need to resist the urge to get ahead of ourselves.

The wait begins. + 1 month.

I called IVF Wales today and they couldn't tell me anything yet about when our first appointment is likely to be. In some ways, one month is nothing. In others, every new bit of waiting seems like a major inconvenience.

We've decided to forget about all this until after the Christmas holiday: to try to relax and enjoy ourselves as much as possible. Good news is, the festive season can be as drunken as we like!! I think we both feel a little edgy about the potential scrutiny we will get in our parents' homes as a result of our situation. But I suspect the feelings are unwarranted.

Church can be difficult. Well, church is difficult at the best of times ( ; ) ) but now I'm particularly conscious of how child-focused it is. We employ a family focus worker to attract young families. In fact, we have some young families already. What we don't have are any 15 - 30-year olds without kids. But nobody knows how to focus on them.... Our Messy Church event is billed as being"for all" and there's a certain amount of pressure to support it. But it is explicitly only open to children who come with adults, or adults who come with children. That more or less rules us out. Oh, unless we want to 'help', which is of course what a childless young couple should be doing, anyway.

Sorry, I'm ranting!

Hey ho. No doubt the answer is for us all to be a bit more open about issues such as infertility. Just not sure I have the local friendships to encourage me in my honesty.....

Telling people. + 2 weeks.

There is no reason to announce our fertility status to the world, and I expect it will take us quite a bit of time to learn how to communicate about it. But it seemed right to let parents know straight away.

I surprised myself by sobbing when trying to tell mum. Haven't done that in ages. But it was the first time I'd vocalised the situation and grief took me by surprise. I eventually caught my breath and actually said the words - "we can't have children". Actually, typing them now brings the emotion back. But I feel better for having allowed the news out. Mum was calm, thankfully.

Jon told his parents too. They were more stunned: I think perhaps my mum and dad had wondered if we were having problems conceiving, whereas his had assumed we were making a choice. I'm sure they have said things over the past year they wouldn't have, had they known. And of course, on their side is the doted-over grand-daughter that we've had to learn to cope with, while my parents have had no reason to become obsessed with a new generation.

Anyway, we both have the concern and support of our families. And I think on all sides it will be much easier to be the possessors of an "explanation".

The Moment of Truth. 0.

So, apparently we are infertile. The GPs actual words were: "I never say it's impossible because the strangest things can happen, but it's extremely unlikely you'll conceive naturally...." Sounds pretty conclusive, eh?

Oddly, the news came as a surprise to me. I think I had grown so used to the endless uncertainty that I'd convinced myself such was our lot in life and was bound to continue. I expected our results would be normal and that we would be told to go away and keep trying. All down to my cup half empty character, I think.

Jon told me on the way home that this wasn't the case for him: he had expected the news we got. Strange, how we didn't know one anothers' expectations until afterwards.

It is a shock. I have been crying. But it's also a relief. On balance, I think I'd rather have this news than uncertainty. It's no fun having no idea why you're not getting pregnant for more than a year. There's a building sense of failure and sex becomes stressful. Each month you anticipate good news, as well as the opposite, and then deal with the let down. You feel repeatedly mocked by your lack of control over, and understanding of, your own body. A year of this is very waring.

Now, I feel that I can't blame myself for, or do anything about, the lack of progress. It's simply the way of things. And we're on the path to addressing the situation, albeit with no guarantee of success. Also, I now feel justified in finding it all difficult. It was okay that I was struggling, I'm in a difficult situation. It's not just an over reaction or lack of sex drive, or whatever else......

It looks as if the problem is with Jon's sperm, which have poor mobility and a strange shape. My results were all normal, as were Jon's blood tests. This is fairly good, as these things go. The GP can refer us to IVF Wales for a treatment called ICSI which is more sophisticated than regular IVF and is better for cases like ours, where the woman's system seems to be working well and the problem is with the sperm. ICSI involves the injection of a particular sperm into a particular egg, rather than the blending of sperms and egg in a dish.

The GP said she will send off the referral letter today and we should wait 4 weeks before calling IVF Wales to see what's going on.

Poor Jon. -1.5 weeks.

Jon had to go and give a sperm sample in Abergavenny this morning, (They can't do the relevant stuff here in Chepstow). There was an option to take a sample into them after producing it at home, but you have to get it to them within 45 minutes of ejaculating, so not really feasible (unless he'd stopped off in a layby, possibly leading to arrest!!)

Poor Jon! The exclusively female staff didn't make many allowances for him feeling embarrassed and uncertain. He was given a tiny container and led to a tiny room with one plastic chair. There were no 'reading materials' to assist, and if it wasn't difficult enough to produce the sample while sitting upright and capture it in the miniscule pot, he was further put off by the continual noise of people walking past, chatting and laughing. This was fairly loud, due to the extreme thinness of walls and door, so there was the added fear they might be about to barge in.

Kind of anti-erotic, really. Anyway, he managed and now he's home. I must admit to being amused as well as struck by the sexism of the situation. As the woman, thus far I've had only very sympathetic reactions from medical staff.

Jon's already had his blood tests, so that's the lot. Back to the GP soon for the results.....

More tests. -1 month.

Just back from my visit to the nurse for my second blood test and my chlamydia test. I think they've checked for Rubella, HIV, various hormone levels. All in all, it's been 6 tubes of blood, so it's a good job I'm not squeamish about all that.....

I'm so grateful for two laidback bosses and relatively loose demands about the hours I'm in the office. It's been fairly easy to make the necessary appointments and not feel at all pressurised about it. Others in my position would not be so fortunate.

Final straw. -2 months.

Saw the GP today. My birthday was a few days ago, 32, a year since we stopped using contraception. Still nothing by way of buns in the oven. I have been feeling quite low.

It does wear you down, having to handle ongoing uncertainty and lack of understanding about what's going on in your body; having to keep going with life as if all's normal; only getting updated once a month on whether you've seen "success". We had a holiday in Croatia a couple of weeks back and when I suffered some constipation, my hope was that it was pregnancy-related. But, no.

I would advise against reading any websites or internet forums about early signs of pregnancy, btw.

Anyway, the doctor was very kind and said I'd made the right decision to come to her after one year. She took some blood in order to run a few tests, told me to come back for more blood tests at a different stage of my cycle, asked me to book a chlamydia test and tell Jon to book himself in for sperm analysis in Abergavenny.

I have little hope that the uncertainty is going to end, if I'm honest. But it is nice to have been able to share it with a professional who didn't think I was worrying about nothing.

False 'alarm'. -3 months.

It has been a frustrating week.

Somehow, I got muddled about my cycle and thought my period was due last week. I'd had some nausea (psychosomatic???) and became more or less convinced I was pregnant. In fact, I'm due this week and just started bleeding.

I can't help marking time with missed milestones. Sadly, these are usually work commitments I was hoping to avoid due to pregnancy / motherhood. As I head out with my suitcase, I remember saying to myself a few months before: "Well, I won't have to go away on that conference if I manage to get pregnant by xxx....." The plans I form become obsolete, one by one.

One conculsion is that I'm in the wrong job, if that is how I mark the passage of time.

In any case, as each month passes, the nervous energy that builds up towards my period increases. Every time my body proves to me that I'm not pregnant, it is more difficult to retain my equilibrium. And, though I know it's a lie, I also feel a bit more like a failure.