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.