Lisa will be twenty weeks pregnant tomorrow, so we're officially halfway to having a baby. And with perfect timing, we've just received a hand-written card in the post...


It's from the people at DuoFertility. They can afford the price of a stamp, as they don't have to refund our purchase price. In addition to the card, which I thought was very sweet, they also sent us a parcel of freebies, including Pregnacare tablets, iron supplements, and even a baby-gro.

I have to say, I've been impressed with them from day one. The DuoFertility gadget would automatically send Lisa's temperature data to Cambridge every time we connected it to the computer, and as a result, they knew she was pregnant before most of my family. They actually e-mailed Lisa in December to say that just by looking at her temperature records, they thought she was up the duff.

When I paid that £500 last May, I thought I was just getting an electronic gadget, but we actually got a great service too. Not to mention a baby. They were constantly in touch with advice, and even now Lisa's pregnant, they're still sending us stuff. Frankly I don't know why anyone chooses IVF. This was a much better investment.

But while we celebrate our new half-a-baby, we're still struggling to cope with our first. Since Shimmy took up residence here eleven days ago, Amelie's become the Wile E Coyote to her Roadrunner. If she had access to the Acme catalogue, we'd be bankrupt by now. Shimmy spends most of her life being chased, hugged, poked and carried, and whilst she's remarkably patient with our daughter, Lisa and I fear for her mental health. With this level of harassment, she could be heading for a nervous breakdown. Only this morning, I heard a distress call from the next room, and shouted "Amelie, are you making those cats squeal?". To which she replied, "No, Daddy. Just one of them".

So while Lisa had a lie-in this morning, I set about making Amelie a list of Cat Rules. We began with a consultation period and brainstorming session, during which I discussed with Amelie the do's and don'ts of cat care, and suggested some possible ground rules. To give her credit, she was very enthusiastic, although I'm not sure she quite grasped the concept of what we were trying to do. When I asked her to suggest some rules, she came up with 'No cats allowed to do gluing' and 'No cats allowed to drink fizzy drinks'. I had to start a second list, just so she could write those down.

In the end though, we compiled a definitive set of Cat Rules, and after a bit of drawing, printing and sticking (no cats allowed), we had this:


I left plenty of room at the bottom to add more, and within five minutes Amelie wanted another line added below 'Let sleeping cats lie'. I was in the kitchen, and I could hear her hassling Shimmy on the back of the sofa, so I called through "Remember the Cat Rules, Am!". At that moment, I heard a cry. Not from Shimmy, but from Am, who came running into the kitchen, holding up her hand, which had a red line streaked across the back. With a tear in her eye, she looked up at me and said:

"I wanted you to write 'No Scratching'!!!"

This is my 2,500th blog post!


And this is my second baby...


Although it looks more like a weather front sweeping in from the Atlantic. Frankly I've seen clearer photos of the Loch Ness Monster, so you'll have to take my word for it.

But photographic evidence notwithstanding, the good news is that eight months after spending £500 on a DuoFertility gadget, we're definitely not getting our money back. As of today, Lisa is 13 weeks and 5 days pregnant. Which is a shock, as we thought she was only 12 weeks gone. That'll teach me to trust her with a calendar.

We've known about Lisa's status as a mother-to-be for the past eight weeks, but after two miscarriages and a lot of dashed hopes, we've been too nervous to tell anyone. On top of that, Amelie's dead set against the idea of a sibling, so we're avoiding baby talk for fear of a tantrum. The way she's coming across at the moment, she'll be there at the birth, trying to shove it back in.

It's less than a year since a top consultant looked at our test results, made a face, and advised us to spend four thousand pounds on IVF, and there have been times since when I've wondered if we were right not to. Although checking my bank statements usually convinces me that we were. As it transpires, £500 on DuoFertility was a much better investment. Especially as I got the money off my parents.

When she was pregnant with Amelie, Lisa had to go all the way to London for a nuchal scan, but fortunately they now do them about two hundred yards from our flat. So we popped in yesterday afternoon, fully braced for the worst. As it turned out, the only bad news was the quality of the photos. Amelie's nuchal scan looked like this, which compares quite favourably to the new baby's portrait...


That one's less Leonardo da Vinci, and more Pablo Picasso. It's also upside down, because the baby insisted on lounging around on its front like a beached penguin.

The important thing though, is that everything else appears normal. Not only is the baby older than everyone thought (much like its mother), but it has two arms, two legs, and a brain the size of a planet. Albeit a very small planet. We don't yet have the results of the accompanying blood test, but it appears there's no reason to worry.

On the downside, the baby's due on July 29th, which just happens to be my birthday. So I'm concerned that Lisa won't be able to get out to buy me a present. I've told her to order something online, and if necessary, I'll stay in to receive it while she pops down to the labour ward.

I'd also like to apologise to those people who have invited us to summer parties in late July or early August, and received cagey answers over the past few weeks, with no explanantion as to why we can't make it. I hope our reluctance makes a bit more sense now. Well, Lisa's reluctance. Personally I'm just not very sociable.

So that's the good news. Unfortunately the scanning of our second child wasn't the only thing going on around here yesterday. The rest of the saga will have to wait until tomorrow...

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Phil, you haven't moaned about your foot for more than a week now. Are you cured?"

Yeah, cured of my optimism. It's almost a fortnight now since I was stabbed in the back (of my foot) by a man I once trusted, and the only discernable difference is that I'm a little more depressed than I used to be. The plantar fasciitis has planted itself firmly in my heel, and fascistically refused to budge. I've had moments in the past week when I've convinced myself it was improving, such as Saturday, when I spent all afternoon on my feet, only to find that instead of the unbearable agony I was expecting, I experienced nothing more than extreme pain. But other than that, it's no better.

I'm due to go back to the podiatrist on July 13th. Possibly in a wheelchair. In the meantime, I'm working towards a place in next year's Paralympic team.

But one area where I'm feeling slightly more positive is the golden age of parenthood. After a great deal of consideration, and a small amount of begging, borrowing and stealing (mostly from Amelie's trust fund), Lisa and I have splashed out five hundred quid on a DuoFertility monitor. We did it mainly for the Boots Advantage Card points, but if it gets us a baby, that's a bonus.

Lisa's been wearing it since Monday, meaning that it's already taken her temperature about 80,000 times, so with great excitement, we downloaded all the data from the sensor to the monitor last night, and plugged it into the laptop for a bit of fertile analysis. Our great excitement was duly matched by overwhelming disappointment when it basically just gave us a dull graph that looked like a Dignitas patient's heart monitor.

Having consulted the instructions, it appears that Lisa has to be monitored for a whole cycle (or in her case a tricycle with stabilisers) before it starts making any exciting predictions. Clearly July 13th is going to be a big day.

This appeared in the Daily Mirror today...


I ripped it out of my mother-in-law's copy after work, so technically that's seven years bad luck. But if it gets us a baby, we can probably live with it.

Two months ago we were offered IVF for £4,000 with a 15% chance of success. Now Boots are guaranteeing us pregnancy within a year for five hundred smackers. Give it a few weeks and Poundland will be selling us twins for a quid.

Personally, I'd never heard of DuoFertility, but it turns out they were featured on 'Britain's Next Big Thing' on BBC2 last month...


It's basically a device which takes Lisa's temperature 20,000 times a day, and tells us when she's on heat. If it's not already obvious. And from what we've read on the internet, it sounds pretty successful. Lisa's been researching it this evening while I dash down to Asda for pregnancy tests and babygros. Obviously I don't have a spare five hundred quid just knocking about the place, but I do have a credit card, and what's more, I'm prepared to use it.

On the downside, the article above says that they'll refund the purchase price "if the buyer does not become pregnant". So if I order it myself, we could be on to a loser.