I'm pregnant!

I was sure I wasn't, having worked myself into a tizz of infertility. I felt premenstrual, grumpy, empty. Sick of negative pg tests, I promised myself I wouldn't do one this time unless my period was actually properly LATE. But I caved the day before it was due (as usual) and did one....... positive!! It was a relief, a great joy, but my stupid negative feelings are still here........ I just can't believe it will stick, can't believe it will actually result in a real live baby - a new person. Who knows what will happen, but I am now free to think about other things again - at last. I might have hidden it from most of the outside world ('most' being the operative word), but inside I was pretty preoccupied by my ability - or inability - to get pregnant again. Thought my luck had run out. But it hadn't - lucky me!!

Disposable world

The other day I took T to visit my granny, who commented on the fine knit-work of T's jumper. The jumper was from Primark and, I think, cost something like £3. It hadn't occurred to me to admire its workmanship. Its value to me, sentimental and real, was £3........ virtually disposable. And indeed, why would anyone now bother to actually knit a jersey when they can pick a perfectly good one up for so little? That's the way we are now. We think everything is disposable and we aren't willing to put the effort in to achieve reward. Reward, like jumpers, is so cheap. I find it sad. It isn't doing us any good. And I am poisoned by this malaise as bad as anybody.

As I lay in bed this morning I actually thought, shall I knit something? A pair of socks perhaps? But I mentally dismissed it: why spend weeks creating something which will be abused, lost and chucked out....... somewhere in my mind it felt like knitting your own loo paper. But with the world the way it is now this attitude must change.

So here we are, trying again this month. I was really looking forward to trying for a baby, properly trying as opposed to accepting another accident, but actually it is getting a bit frustrating....... not nearly as sexy as I had imagined. Which that is my fault I guess. I did the ovulation test kits this month and thought I wasn't ovulating, but in fact I was just very late. I don't hold out much hope though. I'm a barren old mare.

Aunt flo

Got my period yesterday – a day early! I suppose I wasn’t hugely hopeful for this month but, never-the-less, I looked up ‘secondary infertility’ on the internet, in a mist of menstrual tension. It’s more common than primary infertility apparently, so now I am worried. Also my previous caesarean might have lead to troublesome pelvic adhesions. The things you learn on the internet. I do hope T doesn’t end up as a lonely only child. M and I were full of dreams of a big rambling family……. Those seem far fetched right now.
Worry is a great big dampener on all sorts of things, so I will get a grip on myself soon. Get a hair cut maybe, some new clothes, feel sexy again. But that can be soon. Not now. Now I am going to eat chocolate and mope.

Snow and baby thoughts

Back from the mountains and how beautiful they were. But ski resorts, they make the Alps smaller, somehow. I tried to imagine treading those slopes in my great grandfather’s time, with nothing but pick-axes, crampons and hope. What mighty gods those mountains would have seemed, able to steal your life in a heartbeat. You would scan the cloud-shot peaks for whispers of change, prey to the gods of good fortune, and feel small…… so, so small.

But instead we litter the white with our messy brights and pop into pumping mountain-top cafes for vin chaud and chips. It’s just too easy, I think. And suddenly the mountains shrink, are tamed, and it’s sad.

I love skiing. I wish I’d done a ski season in my early twenties, but another part of me feels uneasy when I see the old town drowned, it’s beauty mocked, by giant concrete chalets. I believe I might be becoming a puritan. Watch out.

On the baby front: I bought some of those ovulation things, but then caught flu and didn’t fancy sex at the prescribed time. So I guess another month will pass……. Although……… I have been having strange cramps since a few days post ovulation; almost like a period, but not. My imagination, probably.

Uncertainty

Still on the subject of babies, I have developed an undoubtedly unhelpful determination and single-mindedness. I now know all about the consistency of cervical mucus and LH surges and temperature and all that stuff. After one month of failure I am doing away with romance and becoming scientific. I daresay I need better things to think about. And, anyway, making babies takes two. (I have been in the country all this week and M has been in the city.)

It would be best, I am sure, not to tell M about my new research interest on account of it being a passion killer. After all, everyone (who has spent hours looking it up on the internet) knows that even fertile couples only have a one in four chance of conceiving in any given month. So I am hardly in a position to panic.

But the thing is, whoever we are, there is so much uncertainty in the future. Maybe I can’t get pregnant. Maybe I will get pregnant and lose the baby. Maybe someone I love will get ill. Maybe lightening will strike my car. You see, the list goes on and on. The possibilities for the future are as abundant as the stars. Some of those stars will be wonderful, beautiful and others will be dangerous…. And sad.
So whenever you start planning something for your future, like a baby, which you ultimately can’t control, you are faced with this baffling uncertainty. It’s scary. It really is. I believe one should probably live in the moment. I am a terrible one for looking backwards and forwards……. Anywhere but here.

baby hopes dashed

Earlier this month we began ‘trying’ for a baby. That word is in quotes because of my fast fading hubris. Until this morning I would have said ‘earlier this month we stopped trying not to have a baby’. And then my period came. So now I am convinced I am infertile. I have been looking on the internet trying to find answers…… and comfort. It’s silly. Why can’t we wait for things any more?
My friend B is 8 months pregnant now, after a good 7 months of trying. I remember sitting at my kitchen table, rudely dismissing her worries: “It’s only been 6 months! That’s nothing!”. But timescales mean something different when it’s you wanting that baby. I got pregnant with T in the first month of ‘not trying not to’. And before that, I am very sad to say, I had had three abortions after solitary slip-ups. Maybe I deserve to have trouble conceiving. But maybe it’s a good thing; maybe I need to learn some lessons about the gift of life.
M, meanwhile, who was also suffering from fertility arrogance, thinks he has been drinking too much coffee and alcohol. It’s true, he does. But probably that has nothing to do with it. Next week we are off skiing. Not much chance for romance with little miss T sharing our room. Mainly I think I should relax and stop being a dog with a bone. It’s so boring and is something I’ve done all my life.

I'll tell you my secrets

Let me start by saying i'm very selfish. And perhaps slightly backward. I'm 31 years old - an adult by any account - and yet the little girl resonates in me still; my grown-up steps are awkward. Isn't it funny how we cling to youth - to self-obssession - these days? A luxury, I guess, that is very modern....... and western.

Anyway, although my mind has dragged it's feet, life has happened to the rest of me. I am married, as of earlier this year, and I have a 14-month old baby. But I worry. I worry I won't make a success of this, my grown-up self, that I won't be a happy wife, a good mother. I love my husband, M, but I am petulant. I get rediculously irritated when he swallows loudly, or breathes squeakily. And I tell him. I don't hide it like I should.

I used to be a professional, but now I stay at home and look after our baby. Suddenly our long- excepted roles are changing. I am a housewife. M earns money. It grates just to write that, beacuse I grew up liberated, equal, drinking, laughing, full of hubris and self-belief. A housewife is boring, surely, a failure? And yet, I find myself strangely happy in this new role. The dreamer who had visions of war correspondence........ is she dead? Or did she just misinterpret what it takes to have an "interesting life"? Can excitement, fullfillment, wonder, exist in the mundane?

That's what I want to know. As I set out on the path most ordinary can my eyes stay wide open and my brain alive? And can I keep taking a fresh look at M, can I keep seeing beyond the bodily reality of swallows and squeaky breaths?

I'm going to write about it here. And I won't tell anybody.