I've been struck by how rare it seems to be to get NHS treatment for infertility. Surely it must happen quite a bit, but in all the forums and in talking to other infertile people of this country, it seems everyone is having their treatment privately. I don't blame them. One of the few public sector patients I've come across started trying for a baby when she was 25. After two unsuccessful years they were finally referred for public treatment. The doctors wanted to try every single cheaper (and less efficient) alternative to IVF available, for each one there was a lot of waiting. Now, finally, she is starting her first ever IVF in an NHS infertility clinic. She is now 37.

So what I've come to worry about is that this is really just the start of our long wait for any real treatment...

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The clinic sent us a big bunch of leaflets and forms to fill. We have to sign consent that the clinic can ask our GP to evaluate whether or not there is anything in our medical records that would be any reason for us not to be considered good parents, or something of the sort.

We filled other forms ourselves, with questions such as: "How long have you been in this relationship?" and "Describe your relationship in one sentence." Hmmm. Do they make normal, fertile people do this before they're allowed to have unprotected sex? Now I'm no stranger to having my cervix poked by strangers and have been quite resigned to invasiveness of that sort, but I hadn't thought that somewhere along this process a doctor is going to be making a decision of our quality as potential parents. It's quite daunting.

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One question I often get asked, when the issue of infertility comes up, is whether we're thinking about adoption at all. It annoys me for some reason. Many people asking this are parents themselves, and several have declared that had they been unable to have a child, they would have simply adopted one. It's unhelpful to hear this from people who never have and never will be faced with that kind of a situation and decision.

Well, as it is, we have been thinking about adoption, every now and again. In theory, were we to abandon all our hopes in IVF and go that route, we could start an adoption process next summer, when we've been married for two years.

When I was younger I always thought I wanted to adopt children. Since then I've grown a little uneasy about it. I'm quite sure it is as valid and good a way of getting a child as any other, just different.

But I quite fancy the idea of having a genetic child, to be honest. Not that there's anything that great in our genes (quite the opposite, I suppose) but I feel all my own genetic ties very strongly and in a way I'd be sad not to be able to include my own child in them. I'd quite like to know what it's like to be pregnant and grow attached to a child that hasn't even been born yet, and what it's like to give birth. I'd want to be in my child's life from the beginning, see everything from the very first puke and the first smiles and all that. It would be so very different to have a child who's handed to you at two years of age, with a past all of its own (and an unhappy past too, and you could do nothing to change all that unhappiness) that has nothing to do with you.

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There is still no way we could afford nipping out for some private IVF while waiting for NHS treatment. The prices in UK are simply way too high. But... there is more to world than UK, right?

It might just be possible, if we took another bank loan or loaned money from my parents or something, that we could stay short periods with my parents and try to have private treatment done over there. I could stay longer, Jim could come over for the times when he's needed. The prices of treatment over there are at their highest about a half of the ones in UK, which would more than justify the cost of flying.

This is definitely something I'm going to be looking into, if it turns out that we are only now about to start queuing for the treatment queue or something like that.

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Sorry for the braindump, probably quite uninteresting to anyone, but it had to be done, I suppose.

before & after