It’s been just over a month on the IVF programme, and bloody hell it’s difficult. I mean, I expected difficult. If we’d been playing word association games before we started, and someone said “IVF”, “difficult” would have been pretty damn close to the top of my list.

But yeah. I didn’t quite realise how difficult. Perhaps it’s because we’re trying to move house and I’m trying to change jobs at the same time.

We are properly in the realm of hormonal changes; to be fair, these have not been as noticeable or wild as I expected but they’re still there. I’m not sure how much of this has been caused by the hormones and how much by the house move and associated stress, but what I have noticed is that my normally loving, stable, lovely wife has been replaced.

By a moody cowbag.

Okay, that’s possibly over-egging it, she does have good reason, and she’s still lovely. It’s just that she’s a tad bit moodier, and it shows to an extent. It’s not her fault, it’s the hormones, and the poor girl is going through a lot. She’s started her withdrawal bleed (which, insofar as I can make out, is where instead of getting a period you get a Bastard Period; similar, but a whole lot more painful). She’s been having extremely bad cramps, to the point where she’s been doubled over at times, bad headaches and mood swings. This is all very stressful and tiring, leaving me with the feeling that I’m walking on eggshells all day long.

Coupled with this, I’ve quit my job. I’d not planned to do so this early, but my boss knew that I was looking to move, saw that I’d gone ill (with a mild case of actual flu, as opposed to man flu), put two and two together and got five. Cue irate phonecall from boss:

“Hey, where are you? So that’s just it? Pretend to be ill and slink off? You’ve not got flu, you’ve got a cold.”

“Hang on, I’ve got hold and cold flushes, stiff neck, weakness, sweats, headach-“

“Ohhh, I had those the other week, and I came in – I must be a double hard bastard, coming into work with the flu! You’ve got a cold, and you’re not coming into work because you’re a fucking pussy! You know exactly how much work we’ve got on, you’re leaving us high and dry, we’ve got four men running around trying to do the work of five – “

*Click*

“Fuck you too, buddy.”

I quickly penned an email to the boss of the site, tendering my resignation with immediate effect. I had every intention of going back in when I was healthy, but I’m not being spoken to like that by anyone. If that leaves him with a workload problem, then unfortunately it’s now his problem – he knows I’ve been looking at leaving since December, which has given him ample time to train my replacement. Mrs Astronomer has been telling me for months that he’s a bully, I wasn’t so sure – working for him was certainly miserable, but I wasn’t certain it crossed the line into bullying – but that little outburst at the end somewhat clarified everything for me. That, and when he dropped the C-bomb into a stand up bollocking in front of everyone last week.

So, yeah. Lying in bed, flu’d up, New job had better start soon!