I am not keeping up with life very well just at the moment. I was just about at my limit of business and then I got sidetracked with the whole pet-related tragedy and it all fell apart. I'm also officially in physical discomfort as of today, and just kind of tired and drained, which is making it a little harder to put it all back together. Thanks for all your comments. I'm fine, I'm just spread a bit thin.

Here is the post I wrote between this and the update to it. Mr Bea gets in tonight (or should I say very, very early tomorrow?). And not before time.

--
Unsaid

Sometimes we say more when we stop speaking. When FS first said ICSI, I said donor insemination. "I have a family history of breast cancer," I told Mr Bea, using my trademark rationality. "I don't think it's a good idea for me to be shooting up hormones."

"No..." he replied. "I guess not. But I'd rather adopt than use donor sperm."

"Pregnancy and breastfeeding will decrease my cancer risk."

He nodded mutely.

--

I'm not sure how the following conversation happened. It was just after our first appointment with MD. One moment I was announcing my intention to do another IVF/ICSI, and the next Mr Bea was saying, "I should have made you eat more chicken."

"What?"

"Protein. You wouldn't have been so sick if you'd eaten a high-protein diet."

"But I did! All those protein shakes! I ate nothing but protein!"

"You ate hardly anything at all."

"I ate as much as I could. The OHSS killed my appetite."

"I should have made you eat more. And I should have taken you to the hospital earlier."

"They wouldn't have admitted me earlier. We went to the hospital the very moment I was sick enough to need to go to hospital. It was all under control."

"It wasn't under control. I hardly knew anything about OHSS."

"But I-"

"I shouldn't have let you get so sick!"

For a moment I stopped and stared at him. Then as I drew breath to reply, he turned and left the room.

--

How many entendres does it take to screw in a lightbulb? "It's rumoured," I said to Mr Bea, as we snuggled into bed on the night of the FS appointment which confirmed IVF/ICSI#2, "that frequent ejaculation helps improve the DNA integrity of the sperm for IVF."

"Frequent meaning...?"

"Daily."

"Sounds like hard work." We eyed each other warily for a moment, circling the innuendo.

"Don't worry, I'll give you a hand."

"Uhuh." He shook his head dismissively. "I guess that's fine."

"So you're up for it?"

"I don't have a response to that."

"I could give you one."

"Be quiet! You talk a lot..."

...

.

Ever since he found out the theme for this IIFF was to be "Seasons", Mr Bea has been singing the following song around the house (to the tune of Feelgood Hit of the Summer):

"Synarel, FSH, clomiphene, ovidrel, heparin, progesterone...
I-I-I-I-I V! F!"

He's also disappointed no-one used this song by Crowded House. However, since he was too lazy to actually put an entry together using either of these ideas, he wonders if you could just imagine them in your mind.

I am not inclined to add him to the poll.

You feel cheated by the lines on the peestick. You want soaring romance, an intertwining of souls, a togetherness almost spiritual, and you think I'm giving you cold-calculated dates devoid of passion. But it's not like that.

It's like I'm drowning in signals and noise, pouring in from each part of my body.

I am aware of my lips, parting gently; my breath, spilling into my mouth and catching in my throat.
I am aware of my eyes' dilation as their lids slightly widen, then half-close.
I sense the roll of my hips, the tilt of my pelvis, the curve of my breasts, the arch and bend of my spine.
My fingertips warm from the feel of you; I think I could welt your skin with my softest caress.

I am a ball of sensation in the palm of your hand.

It has been like this since the beginning with you, and only with you. It is unchanged by fertility, and infertility, or by something as cheap as a peestick. The word "lust" is too trivial; "desire" too shallow. What should I call it? It's carnal, and animalistic, and mindless, and deep. That taste. That smell.

The flesh I am wants to grow and swell and hurt and tear, for you and descendants of you. Only my mind knows it's futile. There is no ghost to fear, just the machine.

You want soaring romance, an intertwining of souls, a togetherness almost spiritual. But it's not like that.

After the scan that Friday, so as not to keep Mr Bea hanging, I sent him an email with a message so vague as to be indeciferable to those not already in the know - but it went missing. In any case, it didn't mention the picture.

"Do you want to see it?" I asked when I'd eventually caught him up, and he blanched slightly and said he wasn't sure. Mr Bea is a glosser. If a thing bothers him, he likes to try and make it less real. Me, I'm a confronter. I'm a "meat comes from killed animals not the supermarket, you nitwit, and if you can eat it when it's nicely filleted you can eat it when it's presented with its head attached and if you can't deal with it become a vegetarian" kind of girl. Now, when it comes to eating flesh, quite frankly I feel I have the moral high ground. But in coping with pregnancy loss there's no moral ground at all - just an inhospitable abyss, from which each person tries to climb by whatever means they can. Yet when Mr Bea said he wasn't sure about the picture, some ugly reflex in me threw him a look which said, "Have some bloody backbone, man," so he acquiesced and sat down to see.

"What am I looking at?" he asked after a pause during which he frantically searched the photo in the hopes of not having to admit ignorance.

"It's hard to see - it's the zoomed-out view, and blurry at that. The little round thing just there?"

"Huh." And I watched him as he tried not to shrug and say, "That? That's all it is?"

---

At several points I've thought about giving our embryo/s a name. It's something I haven't done before, but I now see the value in it. Adding a name adds reality; it adds the ability to ritualise and process a loss. It fits with my approach as a confronter. Of course, Mr Bea is against it, being a glosser, but that doesn't mean I can't have a secret name, just for me. Leading up to transfer I decided I was going to call this pair Shitter and Fuckface, based on the reasoning that an embryo with a cute name like "Jellybean" or "Bubblegum" is bound to get flushed down the toilet, whereas "Fuckface" will grow up to be a physically huge and devastatingly intelligent adult, who will exact cruel and excruciating revenge on those who inflicted this early psychological trauma, before turning to a life of heinous crime - and what could make a parent more proud? But at the last minute I chickened out, because really, Fuckface, what kind of mother would that make me? and so the pair went nameless.

Now we're down to one.

I think I'll call her Jester. Because regardless of outcome, this pregnancy feels like some sick bastard's idea of a practical joke.

--
P.S. Thanks for supporting the IIFF - special thanks to the contributors, of course, and those who spread the word on blogs and messageboards. It's great to see so many people touched by the work of our film makers.

I remember the first time I had an embryo transferred. At that very moment my easy-going self became about a thousand times more likely to put her foot down if she thought she was being asked to do something which might harm her little conceptus. And when the last hope for that cycle died away, I felt my usual self return. The changes were immediate and intense. It was, I think, what they call a Mamma Roar.

---

Last night we went out for dinner with some of Mr Bea's colleagues. As my usual bedtime rolled around, I turned to Mr Bea and gave his knee a subtle squeeze, and he gave me an almost imperceptible nod in return to show he'd heard and understood. So I sat back and waited for him to politely make our excuses. Twenty-five minutes later I decided to take matters into my own hands. I placed my hand upon his and said, both to him and to the table at large, "We should be going." He agreed, and immediately turned to strike up a new line of conversation with the person sitting on his other side. As that subject drew to a close, I again took his hand, this time turning to our host who was sitting on the other side of me. "Thanks for an absolutely gorgeous dinner," I said. "It was all wonderful*. I hope you don't mind if we head off a little early**."

"Not at all!" she replied, and I turned back to Mr Bea, who was pouring himself more wine.

"After this glass," he promised. Over an hour after my first request, I managed to effect an exit by gathering our things together and making actual physical manouvres towards the door, forcing all the other guests to stand up and bid farewell. Mr Bea found himself swept up in the general movement, and we were soon on the street outside. "Shall we walk to the MRT?" he asked.

"We're taking a taxi," I replied tersely, and hailed one. There was silence on the way home.

As I turned the key to our flat, he hugged me at the waist and asked if I'd had a nice day. "It was marred at the end by your refusal to leave dinner after repeated requests," I replied in clipped tones. "I'm actually pretty pissed off about that. These are not ordinary circumstances. I expect you to be taking better care." And I didn't mean "of me". I was talking about... well, our precarious and only-just-clinging-to-life pregnancy. The stakes are high this time. I've got my Mamma Roar, where's his Daddy Aggro?

Mr Bea got this sullen, almost childish look - the indignant look of an eight-year-old who knows he doesn't have a leg to stand on but isn't ready to give in. "I might come to bed later," he said once we got inside, lying down on the couch and popping the cushion under his head.

But when I woke up this morning he was lying beside me in bed, curled protectively around my waking body.


---
*Although I do wish it hadn't been almost entirely made up of sushi, soft cheeses and meat cooked rare to medium-rare, and the frequent toasting made it extremely awkward to disguise the fact I wasn't drinking.

**It was already after 11pm.

Mr Bea: When can I stop worrying about failure and start worrying about success?

I, of course, suggested he might like to worry about both simultaneously, and furnished him with a whole list of more specific concerns to try out.

So here's the thing. I have friends and family back home, and none of them are especially offended if I go about my day-to-day life without updating them constantly on its minutiae. They don't complain to me, for example, if I fail to let them know what I had for breakfast each morning, or how often I go to the supermarket and what I buy there. They might, however, have a tendency to get icky if I come home from living overseas without catching up, or at least letting them know.

And it's not like I come from New York, or Mumbai, or some other massively big, faceless city which turns on its wheels each day with nary a care for the comings or goings of the likes of one such as me. No, my home, despite being the third-largest city in Australia, is still described by many as a "big country town". My family moved there from various parts of the world about a hundred years ago, when it was just getting started, and hardly any of us have moved away since. Plus, I spent a good twenty-three of my formative years just traipsing around, forming connections, building friendships, and generally participating in the local community, and have since gone back for more. The long and the short of it is this: I will be seeing someone I know next week who doesn't have a clue we're doing IVF, whether I plan to or not.

"So what's my excuse?" I asked Mr Bea earlier in the week.

"Surely you can fudge it?" he replied. And mostly I can. Especially this first time. But I think we all know that, inevitably, we can't maintain the same level of closetness as we have so far.

"B and C, for example," I explained. "They're our oldest friends, and they're both free during the day a lot. I thought maybe I..."

"B knows."

"What?"

"B knows. I told him."

"What? When? Why? What?"

"Back when it all started. I just, you know, wanted to chat to someone about it. So I told B. I'm not allowed to talk to people about it now?"

"Of course you are." And really, I'm quite relieved to find out that all this time I've been fretting about Mr Bea and how he's coping and everything when I needn't have worried because, you see, he's been seeking support. I'm just a little baffled he didn't mention this earlier, and I'm adjusting to the fact there are people who have known, unbeknownst to me. Over the next several days we had a lot of conversations like this:

"So that time, you remember, when we were at that place, and this happened, and... he knew?"

"Yes, he knew."

"So when he gave me a hug just before I left and I said, "That's not a hug," because he usually hugs so ferociously and he said, "Well I can give you a proper hug if you're feeling up to it," and... he knew?"

"Yes."

"And when C asked me what I was going to do in Singapore and before I had a chance to answer B jumped in and said I should become a Lady Of Leisure, and painted this caricature of a women who swans about having facials at the salon and complaining to her friends about the maid, and I said no, I'd rather become a reclusive eccentric who only comes out of the house at night and refuses to use any mode of transport other than the humble pushbike and always wears purple, then C joined in and had a turn and soon the original question had fallen by the wayside never to be brought up again and.... he knew?"

"He said that? That's pretty smooth."

"Goshdarn. Well this does put a new spin on things."

"Are you finished with the questions now?"

"Did you tell anyone else?"

"Just P."

"P knew? When? So you mean that time we...?"

So it looks like the "friend" situation is more sorted than I imagined. What about the others? Well, riding on the back of an idea given to me in a comment by Lut*, I have created our IVF FAQ. It's a blog! It's an FAQ! It's everything you ever wanted to know about B&A's infertility but were too polite to ask, except the things we don't believe you're entitled to find out! If necessary, I will print little business cards and hand them to people, especially where the alternative is smacking them upside the ear. Mr Bea has made me tone it down considerably, and the above link will be removed once I give the address out, just out of general paranoia. I've written it with a particular audience in mind, but feel free to make suggestions. And feel very free to use the idea if you think it will help!

---
*I don't know how to link to a specific comment, so here it is, from the Model Patient post:

"I have set up a special e-mail address that my friends can put on their baby-pics mailing list. My husband filters them for me. So far, no one has sent me anything there, so we'll see how that works."

Mr Bea: Whatcha doing?

Me: Navel gazing. Literally. I'm marvelling at the invisibility of my laparoscopy scar.

Mr Bea: Invisibility? No, there it is there. (Laying head on my chest.) Although you're right, it is difficult to see from your angle. I could get you my shaving mirror?

Me: Er... that's ok. Thanks anyway. Still, it's amazing how well the body can heal sometimes. I can't find my paracentesis scar at all.

Mr Bea: Really? I always thought it was this one here.

Me: Uh, yeah, you're probably right. Look, I realise you're trying to be helpful, but I was kind of enjoying the sensation of being unmarked by these events, at least in the physical sense.

Mr Bea: Oh. Well, I mean, I could be wrong. After all, there's a similar-looking scar up here, and I know you didn't have two paracentesis tubes!

Me: Where?

Mr Bea: There.

Me: Oh, look at that, there is a scar there. Um. Yes. Yes. You know though, there are times I want you to provide analysis, but at other times I'd prefer emotional support and verbal validation.

Mr Bea: Is this one of those other times?

Me: This is one of those other times.

Mr Bea: That's cool. I can do validation.

Me: This is my other laparoscopy scar.

Mr Bea (sharp intake of breath between the teeth): Ooh, ouch. That looks horrible.

Me: Second thoughts, it's probably best if you stick with analysis.

---
I guess it's good he pays such close attention?

In other news, I've discovered the secret of a really good blog roll - maintenance. I'm up to "J". Dear lord, why haven't I maintained it better? Anyway, mistakes, requests for changes, etc, let me know.

I don't know how many of you are following Infertile Myrtle's Precarious Peregrination Through the Land of IVF, but this week she peregrinated past a onsie reading "Worth The Wait". Which I thought was lovely and subtle, even though it would no doubt still lead to nosey and impertinent questions from complete strangers. But hey, at least it'd be a different brand of impertinence.

On the Johnny Depp front, I'm going to declare the argument closed, for now at least. An overwhelming majority of those surveyed on two blogs voted for Johnny Depp. Those who thought it wasn't Johnny Depp were heavily divided in their opinion and many of their suggestions didn't fit with the profile of being an A-list contemporary of Charlize Theron, perhaps someone known to have modelled watches for the same company. I think, for example, we can agree it's highly unlikely to have been a young Freddy Mercury (on Mr Bea's blog). Moreover, Mr Bea appears to be the only one on the planet who thinks it's Jason Lee. But, you see, I haven't definitively proven it's Johnny Depp, and apparently there's no such thing as "more right" - you're either conclusively right or conclusively wrong. And since neither of us is conclusively right, no-one wins.

I guess we can agree on that, at least.

But I think we ARTers have learnt enough sound lessons in "more right" and "less right" to know such a concept exists. I'll therefore leave it to those whose world-view allows it to decide who's more right in this case. (Hint - it was me.)

...Now that it's nearly over. Which is a shame, because Mr Bea and I need someone to settle an argument for us, which seems like the perfect de-lurking activity. Regardless - delurking week or not, can you please tell me whose face you think this is?


Recently seen on an a billboard advertising jewelry at the local cinema. I apologise for the poor-quality photo - my excuse is it was taken at night, indoors, at a crowded shopping mall, with a point and click.

I might add that Mr Bea tried to bias the results by naming the file according to who he thinks it is. Just in case any of you happened to look at the file name before making your decision. Ha! He thinks he can sway things that easily!

---
The Verdict

The verdict, essentially, is that Mr Bea won't admit he's wrong. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. To fill you in on the background, I also said Johnny Depp. Then I said, no, wait, it's a non-celebrity look-alike model. Then I looked at the billboard opposite and there was Charlize Theron wearing the women's version of the watch or I'm a fried turkey, so we agreed it was reasonable to assume this "mystery man" was, indeed, an A-list celebrity. So I said it had to be Johnny Depp.

Mr Bea says Jason Lee.

Now. I have a whole lotta votes for Johnny Depp and zero for Jason Lee, and ok a few who said not Johnny Depp but someone who looks like him but then you didn't know about Charlize Theron at that stage, and one or two other votes here and there but all in all, according to the jury, I think I won. Add to that the fact that Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron have modelled the same brand of watches (damnit, why can't I find an image of this ad?) and I think my case is solid. Mr Bea wants to return "unproven" and call a retrial. He plans to throw the question open on his blog (can't tell you where, though) and see what happens. I'll let you know.

Sigh.

I asked Mr Bea what his game was.

Yes, he knew about the pregnancy. Found out six months ago. His not mentioning it to me was, in his words, "One part tact, twelve parts cowardice." I asked him how many parts lack of forethought over the fact that I was going to find out sooner or later and the fickle hand of fate does not always have the sense of time and place that I expect from him.

But I hit the roof once, and I have calmed down. I think I've been waiting for that announcement all year. Common age gaps between siblings, you know. And I was preparing myself to spend the entire second and third trimesters sitting on the edge of my seat, thinking, "Surely... surely she can't get to point X in her pregnancy before ours even gets started." And then getting all upset when that did, in fact, happen. Suddenly, I find out it's done. I don't have to worry about it now. The race, you might say, is well and truly lost. I don't have to run it any more.

It also reminds me how much of my social life has gone. We last saw them in January. I was starting to get excited about my first round of injections. I was pissed off at them because they invited us around for a BBQ but asked me to leave my dog at home. So pissed off I petulantly refused to go to said BBQ and instead stayed home with the dog, thinking up lists of child-unfriendly places around town I could invite them to, just so I could feign disappointment when one or both of them had to decline on baby-sitting grounds. I blame the synarel. I'd snorted a couple of weeks worth by that stage. Maybe I should blame my innate childishness.

But mostly it gives me a guilty start, because of all the white lies I tell Mr Bea.

That I wasn't scared about the SCSA, because it's not the end of the world except I didn't know if I could do enough IVF cycles to have the child of a man whose DNA was unravelled and dishevelled and I was frightened about having to discuss donor sperm like it was something that applied to us immediately, because what if we couldn't decide or agree?

That I was looking forward to living in Singapore when I was also worried about all the uncertainties and IVF-related complications involved, and terrified of being on my own.

That I didn't think I was pregnant when, in fact, I did, because I didn't want to get his hopes up just to bring them crashing down.

That my blog is full of the kind of excerpts I send to him, and not the kinds of things I never let him read, because I don't want him to see me like this.

That I'm ok, and I believe I'm going to be ok, and I believe it will all be alright in the end...

So our language of love has become a language of little white lies. Life never used to be like this.

This email (with attached pictures) just landed in my inbox:

M., born 9.24am on September 22 by C-Section.

Weighed in at 7 pounds 12 ounces or 3.540 Kg for the metrically minded.

Same length as I. was when he was born (48cm) but an extra 800g
heavier (I. was 2.7kg/6pounds).

Everyone's happy and healthy and expected home on Wednesday morning.

B.

This is how the Bible tells us it was done: first, He built the man out of red earth. Then He took a rib from the man's body and fashioned it into a woman.

I trawl through my mind, looking for spare parts. If necessary, I will take them by force.

When I prepared for this mission, I put together a small kit. It contains scalpel blades, a hacksaw, several mosquito forceps, metzembaum scissors for sharp and blunt dissection, and my favourite set of gold-handled needle holders. There are several packets of suture material with the needles swaged on. Sterile gloves. Antiseptic wash. And because I am a woman of mercy, there are drugs - local anaesthetic, opioids, and a stash of non-steroidals to take away. All this and a little jar of red dirt, just in case. The kit hangs lightly now, against my back, cushioned inside sterile drapes.

Over my shoulder is slung a quiver, blowdarts resting against my breast, tips capped. I have measured each dose carefully, underestimating slightly out of caution. I may have to track my prey for hours, and subdue her by hand. I hope I have trained carefully enough. My muscles tell me yes, but my mind is uncertain. I breathe slowly to recapture my focus. There is no time for anything else. Soon it will begin.

I wonder which of my potential targets will cross my path first.

From high up on a burnt-out first-story windowsill, I see the answer to my question. Anxious Bea scurries along, eyes furtive, path hugging the wall of the alleyway. Breathlessly, she ascends a stone staircase, thick with graffiti on either side, and enters into her Church Of Despair. I follow, scaling the church wall with the help of a mouldy, cracked, devotional statue and entering into the space above the ceiling via a hole in the roof.

Here I must move stealthily, lest my movements betray me. There is a beam of light rising through a crack in the plaster, and I edge towards it, and look down. The chapel is empty, but I spy a confessional in the corner and after a moment its door opens, and Anxious emerges to walk down the central isle, immediately below my peephole.

Quickly, I uncap a blowdart and shoot it forth. It hits. Anxious pulls the spent weapon from her flesh, and a look of confusion and fear explodes on her face. Unsure of whether or which way to run, her wildly searching eyes fix on a figure in the doorway. And she runs into the arms of Maternal Bea, who has arrived to perform her daily mission to rescue the followers of Despair, who worship under Bitchface, its High Priestess.

All thoughts of stealth removed, I slam my heel against the ceiling, adjacent to the peephole, and soon there is a rift large enough to drop through and onto the floor. By the time I bend over Anxious she is unconscious, but I can feel her pulse and it is strong. Deftly, I flick my kit onto the ground, and begin to unpack the needed equipment for the surgery. But my preparations are interrupted by the booming footsteps of Bitchface who approaches from inside the church, robes flowing, hands raised in the rapture and ecstacy of worship, ready to bring down the wrath of Despair on those who have dared sully its most holy of places.

But before I have time to cower in fear, there is a streak and a whoosh, followed by a damp thud, and Bitchface is looking in stunned silence at a crossbow bolt protruding from her chest.

"Now I know what you're thinking," says Hopeful Bea, swaggering out from behind a crumbling headstone. "Did I bring one crossbow bolt, or two? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. So I guess you've got to ask yourself one question..."

"What, in heaven's name, is going on here?" interjects Maternal Bea.

"That wasn't the question."

"Hopeful! You sit down. You're as much the zealot as she is," Maternal says sternly, gesturing towards Bitchface. "You and your Path Of Eternal Optimism. And if you know what's good for you," she adds, turning to Bitchface, "you'll do the same. That's only a flesh wound. Keep calm, and we'll make it all better. As for you -" I flinch, suddenly ashamed. "I think you've got some explaining to do, young lady. And I want it to start now."

"It was for our own good," I begin, half-heartedly.

"That's no surprise," Maternal replies, folding her arms. "You're acting very much like someone trying to pave their own road to hell."

"There's not enough of us, of me," I explain desperately. "Before, we had Mr Bea. What happens when he's gone? Away? I don't think we can do it on our own."

"And so you...?"

"I was trying to create a new Bea. An Independent Bea. Take a rib, and fashion it into a new being - one with strength, and fortitude, and grace, and other superpowers. It was going to be painless. I was going to do it gently. I was trying to help."

There is a pause, and Maternal reflects deeply, before coming to her conclusion.

At last she smiles kindly, and says, "Did you ever think to ask for volunteers?" Then she sighs. "Come on - you've gone this far. And who knows? It might work. Hopeful, Bitchface, you're both going to help. Together we'll try to perform this miracle."

"Now? Here?"

"Yes, Bea - and it makes me cringe to say this because it's so very corny - but yes, now and here, from the bones of our Anxiety, aided by our Hope and self-loathing, in the doorway of the Church Of Our Despair."

*Update*
There is something wrong with me.
But they don't know what.

Dr flips backwards and forwards through my paperwork with a worried frown slapped across his face, until eventually his expression crumples under the strain and he rubs his eyes and temples in frustration.

Blood tests this morning, more jabs, and he says he wants to book me for a hysteroscopy and/or curette before the next transfer. He also wants to run more tests on Mr Bea's sperm. Yes, more than 30% of our embryos should be making it through the thaw. He's stopped talking about our "family in the freezer" and has begun alluding to our next EPU.

Then there is an awkward pause, and he adds, almost guiltily, "Unless this round works, of course."

Of course.

But his words lack the force of belief.

*Update Ends*
---
I need to write some things down. Feedback is welcome.

Item One

Eleven days til beta, and it looks like I'm getting my period. That's right - 5 days post 3 day transfer. This happened last time. Yes, I've tried to call the clinic - no-one is in at this time on a Sunday. If I leave it alone, the progesterone/hCG injections will keep things down to a light spotting for the next eleven days, and then we'll get our negative. I don't have time for this shit. I am going in tomorrow.

These embryos - crappy and excellent alike - are not even getting a chance. What's wrong with me?

Item Two

Yesterday was the official opening of the Adoption Talks. Mr Bea thinks we're being premature, but the fact is we're planning a move to Singapore. We currently live in the anti-adoption capital of the world. Expressions of interest open intermittently each few years, and from there it takes another three or so years for baby to arrive - providing you go with the faster inter-country option. Couples have been told (I read it in the newspaper) by the relevant state department, that if they're serious about adoption they should consider relocating outside Queensland.

We're moving to Singapore. There we have the opportunity to adopt within 6-12 months. I have announced my resolution to return home (to live, visits don't count) with a child. One way or the other.

Item Three

Mr Bea has just started trying to work through the ethical issues associated with adoption. In contrast to his opinion of eight months ago, he no longer sees this as "option two" above sperm donation. He talks about his sperm quality in tones of acceptance. It's beautiful.

I don't expect to commence any adoption procedings until at least 2008. Talks about embryo/sperm donation are scheduled, but have not yet begun.

Item Four

We ended with another game of hypotheticals. I asked Mr Bea if he'd donate his sperm. He said yes immediately, in a tone which suggested he hadn't thought very seriously about it because he wasn't really expecting anyone to ask.

But the fact is, he does have sperm. And donors are so rare, people are using IVF anyway. Ok, so you'd have to add ISCI, and there's the whole issue of passing on male infertility. On the other hand, he has many outstanding qualities, and a clean medical bill otherwise. Heck, I find his sperm not only acceptable, but actually desirable.

The hypothetical finished there, unresolved. I'd given myself a hCG injection and fell asleep pretty much mid-sentence on the couch. When I woke up, I was bleeding, and I couldn't contact the clinic.

But then I read Richard's latest post and the question re-emerged... is an infertile donor better than none? Or not?

Hypothetically speaking?

Last night we played hypotheticals.

Bea: Ok, what if, ok... you had an identical twin brother.

Mr Bea: And...?

Bea: Well, you're both genetically identical, but an adolescent illness left you infertile and he unscathed.

Mr Bea: Boy, was I unlucky.

Bea: Well, in one sense, yes. But in another sense - check out the option of using your genetically identical twin brother as a sperm donor! He said yes, by the way.

Mr Bea: Oh absolutely.

Bea: You'd have no problem with that?

Mr Bea: None at all. If the IVF/ISCI failed, I'd be there in a flash.

Bea: If...?

Mr Bea: The IVF... well, you know.

Bea: But not instead?

Mr Bea: Well...

Bea: Keeping in mind, of course, my family history of breast cancer, the fact I spent ten days in hospital with ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, my needle phobia, the expense, the inconvenience, the heartache and anguish and did I mention the genetically identical and limitless supply of fresh donor sperm?

Mr Bea: Isn't there something about mitochondrial DNA?

Bea: I'm pretty sure that only applies to artificial cloning techniques.

Mr Bea: Huh.

I regard him steadily for a moment and he squirms with discomfort.

Mr Bea: You know, this is all so hypothetical, after all. I mean, hypothetically, we would actually capture a unicorn and fly on its back to the Magic Cloud Palace where we would drink of the Elixir Of Fertility And Eternal Life.

Bea: I see.

Mr Bea: Anyway, I made you dinner.

Bea: No, let's stick with this. This is interesting.

Very interesting...