The single most helpful measure I've found isn't watching what I eat, but watching what I drink. Apart from all the unnoticed carbs, some drinks contain caffeine or alcohol - both of which lower your ability to deal with glucose. Meanwhile, plain water is fantastic, but gets boring. These low or no caffeine/glucose/alcohol alternatives are a kinder, but still have some taste.

• Sparkling mineral water. This one may also help with pregnancy nausea or heartburn. Drink it plain, with a slice of lemon or lime, or use it to dilute unsweetened juices to lower their punch.
  
  
• Unsweetened fruit juice is more sustaining than soft drink, and even more so if the fibrous pulp is left in. Dilute with sparkling mineral water to lower its impact even further.
  
  
• Teas and flavoured water. There are a million things you can pour boiling water over to achieve a great flavour, and many of them are caffeine-free. A tea infuser makes things easy, but you can easily just use a cup or mug, plus or minus a strainer. Drink it hot, or chill it to serve with ice.
  Orange peel and a cinnamon stick.
  Fresh mint leaves, plus or minus green tea.
  Fresh ginger (chopped or crushed) with a squeeze of citrus (lemon/kumquat etc).
  Honey and kumquat (good for sore throats).
  Rose petals.
  Dried apple pieces.
  
  
• Lassi, either salt or sweetened with fruit.
  

I kind of invented, kind of adapted this the other night, and it is so good! It also thaws well from frozen for sandwiches, wraps, or a mini-meal snack, and the flavours are versatile enough to work with a variety of salad or roast vegetable ingredients. The trick to making it super-simple is to get the herbs pre-minced in jars or tubes from the supermarket. It's so simple you can whip it up as you're preparing tonight's meal, and freeze it (in snack-sized portions) for later as you're doing the dishes.

1-2 tsp minced ginger.
1-2 tsp minced garlic.
1-2 tsp minced parsley.
1-2 tsp minced coriander (or coriander pesto).
1-2 tsp ground cumin.
Dash of olive oil.
Cubed beef or lamb.
Ground black pepper.

Mix all ingredients together in a casserole dish. Marinade for a few hours or overnight if you have time. When ready to cook, cover the meat with water and place in a pre-heated oven for an hour at 180 degrees C. Check and stir a few times towards the end to make sure it's not drying out, but the idea is that the water will just be gone as the casserole finishes.

I nearly forgot. Imagining Ourselves - from the International Museum of Women - is (in case you're just hearing about it now) holding an online exhibition which has been running all year and to which I submitted an entry earlier. They're rounding things up with a series of "best of" votes. I'm in the Oceana category, and you can go here to view the entry and vote for me. If you want. That is, if you really like me... sniff, eyelash flutter.

**Update From Comments**

To help "Untitled" win, here are directions for voting that explain in excruciating detail how to vote:

1. Click on this link to join the Best of Oceania conversation: http://imaginingourselves.imow.org/pb/Conversation.aspx?id=99〈=1

2. If you are not already registered, please click on the link “Join Now!” If you are already registered, then click on the link “Login to Post a Comment”

3. After you have registered or logged in, a conversation box will appear and you just have to type in "I vote for Bea because she is truly the Best of Oceania!"

The voting ends on December 27, so visit soon!

(Thanks Renee and Sanja!)

Short version: scan results (fine), sleep problems (his), booty-shakin' (on hold), too much information (ew).

Scan
I'm not actually sure what else to say about the scan results, since I'm still trying to minimise the amount of time I spend obsessing over numbers, especially those that fall well within the normal range. Everything looks fine. Our boy has a nose. I mean, he had a nose before, but I had this sudden moment when she showed us the nostrils and I thought, "Wow. A nose. Our baby has a nose. With nostrils." It made me a little teary.

He also has "very prominent" genitalia, according to the ultrasonographer, which is funny because there's nothing quite like seeing your husband try to look puffed up, modest and awkward all at the same time. I bet she says that to all the Dads. I wonder how many of them are actually genetically related. I wonder how it makes the others feel.

SOB also started discussing the withdrawal of clexane, but after I explained how much pleasure it gives me to stab myself with a blunted needle and inject an irritant solution under my skin on a daily basis, he agreed to support my habit for a couple more months. He has also agreed to doppler the shit out of all the relevant blood vessels before making me go cold turkey. So that's nice.

On the way home I sat on the same bench where that Indian guy came and spoke to me back in April. It made me all teary again.

Sleep
I think I might have to buy one of those pregnancy pillows. The problem began with the fact that, from the week of EPU, I started feeling the heat more due to that wonderful progesterone we all know and love, and the effect is only getting worse over time. For a while now I have been waking in the morning to find a tracksuit-clad Mr Bea huddled into the lee of my body, breathing gently into his cupped hands to stave off the frostbite. Earlier in the pregnancy, he tried waiting til I was asleep to open the windows and turn the aircon off, or at least take it up a few degrees, but this invariably resulted in my waking violently from some kind of fire-related nightmare, which was unpleasant for us all.

Lately, the problem has been compounded by blanket-stealing. I don't mean to do it - it happens whilst I'm asleep - but I keep getting hold of the blanket to scrunch it around my bust and belly in a cushion-like way. This leaves the tracksuit-clad Mr Bea huddling blanketless in the lee of my body, breathing vigorously into his cupped hands, shivering, and cursing my name. I think a pregnancy pillow might help. And perhaps a zero-degree sleeping bag.

Booty-shakin'
One day a couple of weeks ago I felt some round ligament pain, which lasted about twenty-four hours. Since then, I've had a distinctly "heavy" feeling in my pelvis. I wouldn't call it uncomfortable, exactly, although I have an inkling of how it may become so. At the moment, the problem is limited to two spheres: sex and dancing. In terms of the former, I must* report that the more conventional positions are becoming unpleasant, so for the duration of the pregnancy we will be having unconventional sex.

Aaaaaaand when you've finished trying to rid yourself of those mental pictures, maybe you can supply me with a few new dance moves. A couple of times, such as when listening to those bands Mel told us about the other day, I've found I can't swivel like I did last summer. What does one do on the dance floor when one can't swing one's hips? I urgently need to know.

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*Because I take my journalistic duties seriously.

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P.S. The ultrasound gallery is up. Please email me if you want an invite/URL of the site.

Now that Aurelia's credited this series of posts with discussing the meaning of life, I feel bad moving on to some quite obvious conclusions.

Throughout history, there have been those who trade years of their lives for art. They have lived at the margin of their health, rather than follow some easier, but less satisfying road. Others have traded their lives for sport, for human knowledge, or for a cause they believe in. It shouldn't be difficult to accept that some would trade their lives for the opportunity to parent. In a way, we all trade our lives for something.

People gave all sorts of reasons for their answers to the genie's dilemma, and I do believe those reasons are sincere - after all, more so than any other medical condition, infertility affects the whole family. It's overly simplistic to do what I'm about to do for the rest of this post, which is to focus on just one aspect of the decision-making process.

Nevertheless, those who are most in the thick of the anxious phase of their treatment were willing to give up more to have it work out. Perhaps their answers wouldn't change on a break between cycles. Perhaps, when contrasting their answers with Pamela's, I cheated a bit by using Pamela's thoughts from this post rather than the answer she actually gave here. But don't we always say, when someone in our blogosphere is suffering a terrible blow, that it's best not to make any rash decisions in the heat of emotion? That it's best to wait and see if that initial reaction still makes sense over the weeks, months, and sometimes even years to come? I feel our genie has illustrated the prudence of that suggestion.

The second thing I want to say is about the value we place on ourselves as individuals, and how the way in which we make this valuation affects our ability to find closure with infertility. I know if I was asked directly whether a woman's value lay in being a mother or having a functioning reproductive system**, I would deny it emphatically. A woman's value lies in the life she chooses for herself, and there are many wonderful paths available for the choosing. I believe that, and I don't value other women according to parity. But when that genie appeared a few posts ago, it revealed a lie in my words, because the fact I'm willing to trade some of my life for an ability to parent or reproduce shows exactly how much of my own valuation of myself is tied up in these roles.

It's not just women, of course. Mr Bea blokily refused to be pinned down. He doesn't want to admit that he values his nurturing side, but he wouldn't answer, "None at all." In my eyes, a person's value does not lie in their ability to parent or reproduce, but a person's valuation of themselves may heavily depend upon it.

There are only two roads out of the desert of infertility and into the promised land beyond - you can either complete your family to the extent you desire, or you can learn to value yourself fully with what you've got. Many of us stop interventions before reaching either of those goals, but until you're ready to answer the genie with, "No deal - every one of those years is worth the same to me, whether I have (more) kids or not!" you haven't truly arrived at the end of your journey. You're still wandering, lost amongst the sand dunes, in search of a home.

We have our Big Scan scan today. I want to catch a glimpse of Canaan.


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*Is "biblical" the right word? It seems very Christianity-centric, and I can't exactly claim The Promised Land as Christian-specific, now can I?

**I don't have to explain the subtle difference between these two things.

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Update: scan went well. More tomorrow.