Round up your ghosties and ghoulies and long legged beasties, the BESH are going to scare out the BFPs!

I'm back! Meeting was pretty good actually and things seem nowhere bad as first thought - told you I'm a glass half empty bod!

I missed the Frankel piece on the Beeb, was it good? Fun Frankel Fact for you, which I found out today: he eats 23lbs of oats a day. That's (apparently) the equivalent of 600 weetabix

of sinky and her healthy tongue

Loving that driz has ok'd drinking but not swimming. Tis a center parcs tropical warm pool, all the heat and steam will be good for my breathing and it isn't likely to be strenuous swimming.

I saw some manuka honey in Tesco, nearly fainted at the price of it. Compromised and bought a mid-range organic jar. Luffs honey.

Can I have some calamari? I love a good bit of deep fried squid tenticle.

Winkly, honey has the medical thumbs up. Manuka honey, not tescos value mind. not that I really know what makes them so different

I quite like the accupuncture. I'm not sure if it's because I have somebody ask me how I am, and seem to be interested in the reply. [looser emoticon]. At least, he moves the needles around depending on what I tell him.

Apparently my pulse and tongue were looking particularly healthy today

Right, I'll finish some bits and bobs and then run. You lot enjoy yourself!

Feel free to menkul I did despite doing the sechs only twice and having left over bits in my womble last month covered in smelly rings, but do enjoy yourself with the drinking at least not so sure about swimming with your chest infection.

Big sore boobs and trying to remind myself that we only did sechs once this month, ages before ovulation time so virtually impossible for me to be diffed!

I am feeling quite sorry for myself but am drugging up as I am going to center Parcs later today for a drinking and swimming weekend.

Going once, going twice, going to be battered. :)

Why are you menkulling? You should be feeling sorry for yourself and reading crappy magz with warm drinks!

Oh thank you. I think honey is scientific now, no? I just have a totally bargain basement respiratory system that surrenders at the first hint of any germy onslaught. My friends are well used to pausing conversations for me to have a hacking coughing fit then resuming as if nothing happened.

Can you tip some over me as I am menkulling like crazy, and batter the rest to go with a naice aioli and a glass of wine?

Frank how did the meeting go? Hope the firm is alright!

Hope you feel better with the chest soon, winkly. I am a sciency type and hate placebos, but honey and lemon does tend to do me a lot of good. With some alcohol or paracetamol stirred in if you want to improve it!

Enjoy the needling sinky! Do you think it helps?

Enough heavy shit.

I have a bucket of calamari rings here, anyone fancy them tipped over them? If not, I shall fry them and share them out with Hurrah it is Friday drinks :)

Right, I am back having worked off all that emotional blah in a (very slow and painful run) just doing a tiny bit of work and then off to another weekend away with SB :)

The falling sounds worse in detail, euro. So now I am not longer as entertained but impressed with boot rescuing!

As to the ritual, it does sound hideous, and really dot I am actually worried it might be a bit too powerful for my liking. I am liking norf's idea of letter burning (am a pyromaniac at heart) although the ash scattering might be way too much. But I sort of decided that I would keep the letter, I wrote it in a nice notebook and I think I'll stick the pics of me being diffed in there too. We discussed options in the sesh, but I recoil from most of them. Candle burning, spare me; having a place to come back to, no thanks; etc, etc. We came to the conclusion that writing and baking is what I do naturally. So SB and I might just eat loads of cake and chat about how it was when we thought there would be a baby in April. I've thought of my version of letting go rituals a bit more, so now I'm thinking of writing a note (or preferably poem) and folding it into an origami boat and letting it float away on a lake or something. Also, she suggested I should give SB the space to do something for him to let go too (and he might be into candles and stuff, which worries me) so we might do that too.

In the pub (where I met SB after the sesh) I realised that I associate decent single malt with grief, as we went round to my grandparents place when my granddad died and drank his collection after his funeral with the grandchildren. So maybe it will involving drinking to life, which is what we did then too.

Oh and as to sharing with SB, I don't think that matters too much, he's the girl after all. And he seemed not horrified by the letter writing (and is threatening to do one of his own!) and then we can share both.

Alright hags?

I'm back in the land of the living after a week of nights. Good effort on the scans, the excellent cm, the cathartic letter writing, the Frankle mourning, the tripping over your own feet (but saving the luffly boots), the injections and the developing chest infection (poor winkly)

The ritual does sound horrendous driz, but like norf said, so did the letter. It might surprise us all you

Am off for a bit of relaxing needling shortly. I think I just like the opportunity to lie still for an hour.

My promised appointment, surprise surprise, hasn't appeared. Told on Monday it was in the post. Assuming 2nd class mail, am I being daft to think it might be here by now?

Drizz I'm not entirely sure. It was next to scaffolding for building works and I think I stepped on a broken bit of paving that rocked down quite a bit so I tripped on the next paving stone and went sprawling forwards. I was carrying my noo boots at the time, but thankfully they appear to be unharmed.

I do think the letter exercise sounded helpful for letting you get it all out, even if it was really tough. Burning it sounds good. You can let all that grief go.

You could do something like burn the letter and then scatter the ash somewhere beautiful - into the wind off a mountain (if you are a mountain type) or into a running stream or river.

Norf my chest is a bit rubbish today. Feeling v asthmatic and old.

Oh driz well done. Am a bit of a Victorian gentleman myself and am highly impressed at your emotional strength getting through that. Did she give any clue what form the ritual might take, if you don't mind me asking? I have slight visions of a mud splattered dance round a bonfire but the awful letter homework implies something far less fun. (and well done on your beautiful ewcm)

drizz, that sounds really good, and some of it is also really familiar to me. A ritual sounds awful, but then we all thought the letter sounded awful, and that turned out to be really important in helping you to grieve and untangle what you are grieving about and, umm, stuff. Do you think the difficulty with a ritual is that it's something you have to do with/in front of SB, whereas the letter was just you?

for driz

Sounds like you covered a lot of ground and that it was a really productive session. Well done. Don't rule out the ritual thing. You might find it a whole heap more powerful than you think.

Sharing - apparently - is good, so I shall overshare a little, norf. She eased into it by asking about my (new-ish) job, I think because she wondered whether I hide in my work from issues, which I don't think I do. So we left that after I explained what I do (and that I had had a great week at work) and then she asked what I took away from the last sesh.
I told her I discussed stuff with SB and another friend - sorry failed to mention you lot and said they recognised the two main things: Victorian gentleman like unwillingness to engage with (negative) emotions and a bit of a family-tangly-issue (which I have not mentioned much on here). She seemed pleased I discussed stuff and then she asked about my home work, so I told her I did it, but that I would not share the letter with her. She was okay about that, asked me whether I wanted to read the beginning and the end. The answer was no again! So she asked me to read it to myself, which was a little akward and made me cry a lot. I didn't tell you what I wrote, but it was mostly worries whether the MC happened because I was not happy/welcoming/loving enough. And in the letter and now, I think that is bull. I was really happy and MC don't happen because you don't love the unborn ball of cells enough. (But emotions are strange and stupid.)
So then we talked about what is important to me about this, whether I could take anything positive away from it and stuff. The main thing I found helpful is that I discovered you can engage with sadness and/or grief without it taking over. So now I am being encouraged to do that a few more times, until the tear flowing gets less. The next step after that is letting go, preferably by a ritual, and guess what I am more allergic to that than to the letter writing. So I discussed it with SB last night and we might just either not do it, or make a big joke out of it.
So now, I am thinking about what I want to get out of it. This sesh was all about engaging with the sadness, which I suppose I would never have done without counselling. But I think next time I want to move to the despair that comes from infertility, rather than the sadness that came with MC. I do feel like I can manage that myself and I need more help with the IF issues than with the MC. But then, I thought I was further along with dealing with it and then I spend half the sesh crying about it, so maybe I am hiding my head in the sand...

Right end of overshare.

Oh and FSR I happened to look on the SO fred, as you do, and spotted your question about CM and headaches on menopur. I absolutely did not overstim (2 eggs was what they aimed for, using 1 vial of menopur, but I ovulate on my own) and I had STINKING headaches from day two of injecting. My other side effect was going a bit mental (emotionally all over the place). I didn't notice CM particularly, but at IUI the doc commented on how beautiful it looked (well fanks for that).

How did the counsellor approach this session, lem? Don't answer if it is too much. I'm glad it was less traumatic, anyway.

Poor euro pride, that sounds hideous if entertaining for the onlookers. May I ask HOW exactly you achieved that whilst not drunk?

at Christmas is for nob jockeys. One I didn't expect to find when I logged in this morning.

Is this the frankel retirement show? Enjoy it while it lasts! and I didn't get any of the description either norf it is not you it is her

I love wankstain and shall appropriate it for the twat doc, I saw yesterday. Seems apt since he works in infertility as well. I had another counselling sesh. I cried lots, but it was less traumatic than last time.

Morning hags.

I'm fine thank winkly. Only my pride was damaged. I caused a people jam as it was on a narrow walkway and during the evening rush hour.

FSR they just flagged that they are going to do a piece on Frankel later today on the BBC Breakfast programme.