Trying To Conceive

Tilly · Sep 25th, 2007, 22:37 PM

Hi all, this was posted on another forum I go on and I thought it was a lovely story. Sorry if it's been posted before.

Anastasia and her husband Nick have been married for 3 years and are expecting their first baby. Anastasia, who is 33, is a freelance writer and lives in London. This is her first entry for her pregnancy diary

The beginning

This was the 13th month in a row I’d woken up on the day my period was due filled with hope, fear, and newfound religion (‘Please God, let me be pregnant.’) Twelve times I had been disappointed. Today, something was different.

I’ve wanted babies ever since I relinquished a cherished doll at the age of twelve. But for the twenty-odd years since adolescence, selfishness overrode broodiness and having children never entered my mind. Until, that is, I met the love of my life. A couple of years into our marriage and the birth of my nephew ignited an acute case of baby lust, and suddenly there was no turning back. Thankfully, my husband Nick had been ‘ready’ (as ready as men ever are) and was waiting for the signal from me to go. Go.

I ceremoniously threw my diaphragm into the back of the cabinet and decided we’d just have fun. This strategy worked for approximately one day. I am an information seeker by nature, and although I believe information is power, I now believe that too much information can cripple. On the advice of a pregnant friend, I bought a 400-page book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility, and pored over it as if it were the focus of an exam.

Busy digesting this tome, I discovered my period had started. How could that be? I mean, for decades I had done everything I could to prevent pregnancy, and now that I wasn’t preventing it, I just assumed I’d catch it like some contagious, but desirable, disease. This changed everything. My body had betrayed me. Using my handy reference book, I immediately diagnosed myself with a range of problems – polycystic ovaries, short luteal phase or worse yet, ‘incompetent uterus.’

Trying times

One month of ‘seeing what happens’ turned into twelve more of ‘trying’ (a most humiliating and pitiful term). In the beginning, friends would ask me what was new with a gleam in their eye, expecting news of my pregnancy. I never had any. After seven months, they stopped asking, which was worse.
Meanwhile, making love turned into mechanical sex, which spiralled into clinical sperm transactions. My confused husband was transformed into my rent boy, forced to do his duty the moment my ovulation kit gave me the big O.

I continued to surf the internet for more information and bought every book on conception and infertility in print. I’m sure I could pass the medical board exam in obstetrics if given the chance. An assignment to write an article about infertility for a magazine helped me see the light. Inspired by the idea of getting paid to pursue my obsession, I threw myself into the research and discovered a doctor whose practice focused on natural solutions to infertility. He was so positive, so believing, and so unlike the other doctors I had met, I set up an appointment to see him privately.

He did a scan of my uterus and told me it looked ‘smashing.’ I beamed. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Anastasia, you are healthy and will get pregnant. Trust your body and let it happen.’ He then gave me statistics that transformed my doubt and satisfied my inquiring mind. He said that at my age, after one year of unprotected sex, 70% of women will become pregnant. After two years, 85% will have conceived. And after three years, only 2-3% of women will not have conceived, and for them, there are many medical solutions. I memorised those odds and threw away the phone number of the IVF clinic.

Five days after my guru appointment, thirteen months after we had started trying, I conceived. It sounds ridiculous, but it was as if I had been given permission to get pregnant and so I did. Sure, the odds were with us, but I am convinced that my shift of attitude played a huge part.

Two lines

So that brings us back to the day I was expecting my period. I found myself in a familiar scenario; it’s 6am and I’m once again peeing on a stick. Except this time, almost immediately, two lines appeared. Two lines. I looked at the stick in the light, looked at it again near the window, and wondered if my eyes were creating blue lines where there were none. I called for Nick. ‘How many lines do you see here?’ Groggily, he mumbled, ‘Two. What does that mean?’ (Men). ‘It means we did it. We’re pregnant.’ He looked at me with doubt, not sure if this might just be another of my phantom pregnancies or emotional breakdowns. But he sensed my conviction and said, ‘Wow’ over and over as we stumbled back to bed, trying to convince each other that we were really going to have a baby.

Weeks 4-10 – it’s real

The first thing you learn when you’re pregnant is that you’re ‘four weeks pregnant’ when in fact you have only just missed your period and the little embryo can’t be more than two weeks old. But that’s the way it’s measured, and in early pregnancy every day is a milestone. So being ‘4 weeks pregnant’ feels like a bonus. Every time I go to the loo, I half-expect to see blood and when I don’t, I breathe again.

Nick and I spend the first week looking at each other in disbelief. We really did it. We decide not to tell anyone for a while, but I have lunch with my friend Rebecca the day after the pregnancy test and she looks at my face and knows immediately. So once it’s out of the bag, we tell the world. Every once in a while, someone will say, ‘You can’t tell anyone until you’re twelve weeks pregnant,’ and I realise that I hate this ridiculous rule. If, God forbid, I were to miscarry, should I shoulder that responsibility myself and suffer in silence? Are you meant to lie to friends and pretend nothing’s happened?

I immediately make an appointment with my GP to tell her the good news. To my surprise and disappointment, there are no ‘official’ tests or scans or anything…She simply believes me, congratulates me, and half-heartedly takes my blood pressure. She pulls out a little paper wheel, asks me the first day of my last period, and announces that my baby is due March 7, 2001 – my own birthday. Although I take this as a good omen, I leave the surgery with the unnerving feeling that maybe I’m not really pregnant after all. Thirty quid and three more pregnancy tests later, I’m pretty sure the twin blue lines aren’t lying. This is real. As I walk to the bus stop I repeat to myself: I am pregnant, I am going to be a mum, there is a tiny living thing inside me. Wow.