Advent

Rob was away this weekend and I had made myself a long list of things I wanted to do whilst he was away. Our house was slowly turning into a tip from where I'd been on IVF and then in hospital and slowly recovering and so it was time to stop the rot and have a big clean-up.

I also managed to go shopping, getting a lovely dress for my work's Christmas party. I also went into town for the Christmas Fair on Sunday as well as cooking the most scrummy lamb shanks in red wine gravy ever!

I also busied myself creating a different sort of chocolate advent calendar instead of just popping to the shops and buying one. This took me ages to do but Rob loves it. We are lucky enough to have wooden beams on the ceiling and so you can pin things to them without causing any damage. The numbers are random so we have to hunt around every day to get a chocolate treat. Honestly we are going to be putting on the pounds by the time we've finished this lot!

It was a nice weekend although I was happy when Rob came home, the house seems so quiet without him. The stupid thing is I felt quite down later on Sunday evening. I think I'd been running around so much all weekend that it was the first time I'd sat still for two days and that enabled me to think again. One of my old work friends had a gorgeous baby girl this week and I'm really pleased for her. Her facebook status said 'Kathy is the happiest and soppiest person in the world at the moment' and it made me cry reading it and looking at her photos. I'm so happy for her but I'm also so jealous and at the moment it makes me feel very sad at times when I think about things like that.

The worst thing actually is the Coca-Cola Christmas adverts - you know the ones, with the lit up lorries and the 'holidays are coming, holidays are coming' tune. Last year when we were on our first IVF cycle, we were so excited and the adverts started appearing on TV just as I was stimulating and so we kept singing 'follicles are coming, follicles are coming.' Unfortunately the adverts this year have just begun as I got my 3rd negative cycle and hearing that tune is one of the things which really really really digs deep into my heart and makes me cry. It's so hard to believe we're a year on and still in this nightmare battle and I just wish we could get some of the excitement and positivity back.

It's the little things which can make me amazingly happy one moment or sweep me into the darkness the next.