Normality returns.

Well, whatever counts for normality, anyway. Specifically I mean that Mrs T and her Mum seem to be talking again and we had the weekly email update for the first time in a few weeks. Mrs T phoned on Monday evening and spoke to her Dad, then again on Tuesday and spoke with her Mum for quite some time. Apparently the conversation started as if nothing had happened, but Mrs T did bring up some of what we've been feeling and they spoke seriously about things. On that Wednesday, following the operation, the silence from us (well, me) allowed Mrs T's Mum to convince herself that Mrs T must have died and that I hadn't plucked up the courage or energy to let them know. No wonder they were getting anxious.

Mrs T and her Mum have spoken again since, and as I said above the family newsletter arrived today, which suggests things are back on track. At some stage I'm going to have to speak to them myself, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

New Baby!

There's a new baby in the family! Everyone's healthy, and we popped down in the evening to visit the hospital. It was great to see them looking so happy through their tiredness. (Labour was over 24 hours...)

On route home we spoke a bit about whether we'd felt at all awkward visiting such a new baby so soon after a failed pregnancy. I'm pleased to say neither of us felt especially emotional about the situation. Mrs T also mentioned that the visit confirmed to her the rightness of not having told our family about the miscarriage - or indeed the pregnancy. I quite agree: knowing what we've just been through would have made it awkward for them in their joy.

Hurt relationships

I note that it's a week since I last posted here. As with my attempts at keeping a diary over the years, my initial enthusiasm soon wears off. I'm going to try keeping this up - at least a weekly entry - as I think it's been a useful tool for me.

Mrs T continues to recover, physically, from the operation. The Laparotomy scar is healing well and her energy levels are - slowly - improving. We went out to a local town for a couple of hours this afternoon where they hold a free music festival each year. It was a lovely warm day and we enjoyed some great music and fairly decent food before pottering round the market to stock up on fruit for our juicer (cherries! Yum!) and finding our way home. An excellent afternoon, but still very tiring for Mrs T.

Of concern at the moment is our relationship with Mrs T's parents. (See "bad son-in-law" for the background to this.) We've had llittle communication: no phone calls, and Mrs T's emails have been unanswered. She did speak to her Mum last Thursday, but came away with the impression that her Mum "couldn't wait to get off the phone". Mrs T has drafted a possible letter to her folks, but neither of us is really sure how best to deal with this. We feel that we hurt them deeply by asking them not to come down following the operation and then aggravated this by my lack of communication the next day. Mrs T's letter talks of us both being in a state of shock for several days, but having our reasons for wanting to deal with this on our own. We're not posting the letter just yet, and I think, after chatting about it on a few occasions, that Mrs T is now going to try phoning over the weekend to see how things feel.

All clear!

Saturday evening, and I'm just taking a quick break from watching Live 8 to update you all. (Note the vain assumption that there might be someone reading this.)

We went to the hospital yesterday for our first follow-up appointment. First to the pathology lab to take yet another blood sample for analysis. It's quite common to wait ages there once you've 'booked in', but Mrs T was lucky and was seen very quickly. We then had an appointment at the ultra-sound room. I think we were both quite nervous; it was in that very room that things had turned into an emergency ten days earlier. The Radiographer (or is it radiologist?) tried to be gentle because of Mrs T's scar, but Mrs T was clearly uncomfortable. The scan was once again unclear, and she explained that because Mrs T has a "retrovert uterus" (ie, it slopes away deeper into the abdomen than usual) an external scan will always be unclear. After the previous experience, however, Mrs T did not allow her to do an internal scan. After all, the blood test might well show all we need to know. We waited to see the doctor...

After a while in the waiting area (surrounded by couples having - presumably - routine pregnancy scans, he called us in. He'd picked up the blood results, and could very positively confirm that the pregnancy hormone had dropped right back down to a normal level. I guess for most couples who had been pregnant two weeks previously that would be very sad news. For us it was confirmation that there was no ectopic pregnancy still hiding away somewhere and therefore came as an "all clear".

Somewhere in the last few days Mrs T had indicated that she thought it might be "quite some time" before she'd feel like wanting to try again. (Understandable, I guess.) I was really pleased though that yesterday, as we walked, slowly, along the High Street, after picking up yet another DVD to while away the hours at home, she said something along the lines of "I'd love to think we'll be pregnant again soon". I smiled.

I think it's time to go, now. It sounds like The Who are on stage.