The Start

Do you ever think back to your pre-child family aspirations? I was having 3 children (two boys and a girl – no other combinations acceptable) and these children would be born within 18months of each other, you know, so they could be friends. There was no consideration towards the energy, nurturing and expense of each individual child nor the fact that it might just not happen like that.

So I got married.

He’s nice, you would like him. I won’t bore you with the numerous ways in which he is nice and why I decided to let him sire my children (good word, right? I think ‘sire’ should be used more in modern day vocabulary, anyhow, I digress) as I am sure that once you get to know me a bit better it will become obvious that he must have some saintly qualities to have stuck around and sycophantic musings on other halves always brings a little vomit to my mouth. Seriously, if I hear one more person write into to Steve Wright on a Sunday and describe someone as their ‘rock’ I may just tie that someone round their neck and throw them into a lagoon. See how the "rock" analogy works out for them then! Anyway,  I got married, we did that for a bit while I tried one career after another, trying to find one that would fit and then the pang from my fallopian tubes hit.

My ovaries were twisting; crying out to have one of their monthly offerings put to good use. In hind sight they probably just wanted some time off the monthly grind, maternity leave if you will but without the dependent to worry about (can you even imagine?) All of a sudden there was no assuaging my need to procreate, it was an insatiable thirst that would only be quenched by bringing an infant into my life and the greater world. I was ready. We were in our late 20s and had been together for seven years. We had done the drunken nights out, the pub lunches with friends that go on late into the evening and the two day hangovers that would undoubtedly lead to the Monday blues. We knew that we could do whatever we wanted with our time but we were over that freedom and wanted a new challenge. (We have since decided that we may have had a brief period of insanity and perhaps should have considered checking into the local asylum rather than procreating.) However, I was in the middle of quite an intensive professional exam schedule and getting pregnant, whilst not terminal would have been ill advised.

So we got pregnant.

After years of desperately trying not to get pregnant I was convinced that we would be the unlucky ones who would require intervention. My periods were intermittent at best and my pessimistic outlook in life had convinced me that we should start trying so that we could get a few months under our belt before presenting to the GP for help whilst we were still in the NHS accepted child bearing years.

It happened first time.

My evil husband (not really Love) made me run a rather gruelling 10k on the morning of my father’s 60^th birthday celebration. I was aware of a mild cramping pain in my pelvis as I plodded around the ridiculously hilly course but I thought I was just ‘coming on’ and tried to push the discomfort to the back of my head (next to the mounting dislike for my husband.) At one point, there was a supporter on the side line shouting encouragement to everyone who passed, until she saw my face (which was apparently drained of all colour) and literally said “Oh my God!”, not in a good way and definitely not encouraging. Anyway, I am stubborn and we finished the run in his intended sub 55minute time (bastard) and proceeded to the 60^th celebrations where we drank copious amounts of champagne, wine and gin, in no particular order. I awoke the next morning waiting for the ominous tom-tom drum to start thumping between my temples but instead the pain settled a little further south; somewhere in my nipples. They were in agony. As in, the sheet was torturing me by wielding its vice like grip on my delicate protuberances. Still, the penny did not drop. My husband set off for a day’s cycling and it was only as I was left to the quiet of the house that I thought “might just do a test, you know, so I can enjoy a hair of the dog later”. 

It was positive. 

It was positive and I was on my own. 

Do guys get annoyed at missing out on these magical urine focussed events? Should I lie? Could I lie? The answer to this is always no. My face is terrible at it and he knows straight away. Great for him, terrible for me. Wait, what? Never mind him, I am pregnant. Impregnated. With child. Bun in the oven. Up the duff (lovely expression by the way, such positive connotations). I needed a drink. Why is it that the one time you really need a drink is the one time you really shouldn’t drink and to be honest, I had probably had more than my fair share the night before. Thus, the mother’s guilt begins.

What have I done?