Waiting list disaster

We've been looking after two of my little nieces for the last week and a half which has been a blast. Charlotte is 4 and Lilly is 3, and they are just so precious.

Blowing bubbles was a great time-wasting activity

The girls enjoying Murray's Dads bird aviary

They went to stay at their Grandma's from today, which is good for them as they will be with their other brother and sister, but still quite sad for us to see them go. Spending ten days with two princesses is definitely a learning curve - toilet training, making dinners that the girls like, bedtime routines, doing their hair dozens of times a day (they loved me playing with their hair so they kept pulling out to make me keep going!). Overall it was a very rewarding experience.

Between having the girls here and one of my best friends falling pregnant recently, we have started thinking about fertility treatment again, and so today I called the department of health to follow up on where we were on the waiting list for the public IVF clinic. After going through four different people, I managed to speak to the person who looks after the referrals and appointments. My referral was placed on 11th October 2011. Except that when she looked up the referral it says 'Final-Complete'. I asked her what that meant and she said that our referral was finished, it had been marked complete which meant we were no longer on the waiting list!!!!

I was in complete shock and just started quietly crying. The woman on the phone was the 'patient flow coordinator', and she basically said that someone must have marked it complete for some reason, but she doesn't know why, and she would have to get someone to look at my file but she couldn't do it today because she was busy. I hung up and went straight into the ladies bathrooms and cried.

I can't even process that we may be going to the back of the queue because of this. I just can't. It would be like admitting defeat for me. I am going to call the clinic back tomorrow afternoon to see if they have looked at my file. It's unbearable knowing that this mistake could cost us another 18 months. Fingers crossed that tomorrow we get some good news.