On The Outside Looking In...

When you want to get pregnant but it ain't 'appening, eeeeeeeverybody in the world seems to be pregnant except for you. And I mean everybody. It isn't my imagination or a form of hysteria; I have been researching the problem and can now conclusively reveal to you a selection of the lucky bastards who are currently pregnant whilst I'm not. The following list is based entirely on fact, logic and rigid research.

People who are pregnant and I’m not: every other woman alive between the ages of 10 and 60 (but especially teenagers; heavily pregnant teenagers smoking and drinking WKD at the bus stop outside my window), men, centenarians, children, babies, foetuses in utero, child pageant contestants, Chelsea Pensioners, that Sikh marathon runner who’s, like, 93 or summink, eunuchs, hermaphrodites, angels, vampires, zombies, werewolfs, mermaids, fairies, pixies, elves, goblins, hobgoblins, sprites, selkies, ghosts, unicorns, trolls, The Loch Ness Moster, Cthulu, Godzooki, Scrappy Doo, The Singing Ringing Tree, Rameses II, Crystal Tips and Alistair, Parsley The Lion, Wilf Lunn, Noseybonk, Metal Mickey, Joe Dolce, Su Pollard, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, all the crows that Kiora is too orangey for, Ricky Tomlinson, Ronald Reagan, Suri Cruise, Noggin The Nog, Champion The Wonder Horse, Winston Churchill, the Smash aliens, Eamonn Holmes, RuPaul, Bouncer from Neighbours, Ralph Fiennes, The Flumps, Karen Carpenter, Bongo, Rory, Twanger but not Boots, Hume Cronyn, the aspidistra from The Adventure Game, Marti Feldman, Louis XIV, Princess Diana, Bryan Cant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Zeus, all the PG Tips chimps, the Jolly Green Giant, Gok Wan, Mrs Thatcher, Nono (the robot from Ulysses 31), the New Shmoo, Barbapapa, Babar The Elephant, Barbara Windsor, Barbara Cartland, Barbara Woodhouse, the Tourette’s one out of Battle of The Planets, Andrea Dworkin, Muriel Spark, Nigel Slater, Wee Jimmy Krankee, Jane Austen, the sausage from the old Grange hill credits, Beryl Reid, Barney Rubble, Willy Wonka, Tufty the road safety squirrel, Ron Jeremy, Myra Hindley, Gilgamesh, Dr Legg, Miss Haversham, Jimmy Corkhill, Chaucer, the Girl’s World head, Michael Palin, Simon Weston, Peter Sutcliffe, Bill Hicks, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Dawkins, Dizzee Rascal, the Andrex puppy, Barry Scott (rudimentary IVF via a hollowed-out Cillit Bang bottle), the Shake ‘n’ Vac woman, Lena Zavaroni, Rosa Parks, Penelope Keith, J R Hartley, Hufty from The Word, Trevor Mc Donald, the Staypuft Marshmallow Man, Ducky from Pretty in Pink, Dogtanian, the Terminator (all models), Portland Bill, Mrs Spoon, Heggarty Haggerty, Miffy, Meg and Mog, Grotbags, Vince Vaughn, Elizabeth Bennett, Gandalf, Winston Smith, Percy Bysse Shelley, Pac Man, Jesus, Hitler, Marie Curie, Eleanor of Acquitaine, Fred West, Betty White, Jim Henson, Emmeline Pankhurst, My Neighbour Totoro, My Neighbour Annoying 4am Techno Man, Roland Rat, Herbie, Big Ben, Mr Ben, Ben Nevis, Winnie The Pooh, Joey Deacon and Keith Chegwin.

To name but a few.

The Facts of Life

Right. Well. Seeing as this is a blog about my quest for to put a baybee in my tumtum, I better get some facts and figures out of the way, thus leaving me free to whine, bitch and moan in all future posts without constantly reiterating info (although I probably still will). 

Now then, because I am a contrary and  obstreperous bugger (what, I believe, Americans might call ‘ornery’) and my body follows suit, delighting in being deliberately perverse, this is not going to be a blog about how I have loads of medical things wrong with my reproductive system. Ho no; not for me the predictable woes and conditions of the 35+ female desperate to conceive, because I always have to be bloody different. I have abso-sodding-lutely nothing wrong with my reproductive system or fertility. If I had a child for every time a Doctor or specialist has told me how much more fertile I am than other women and how they can’t understand why I’m not getting pregnant then, well, I’d probably be being interviewed right now for multiple tacky tabloid ‘n’ trash mag articles about ‘Britain’s Biggest Families’ (except I wouldn’t). Yes, I might be 37, but all my test results are those of a woman 10 years my junior. 

The worst test result I’ve got so far was ‘average’; everything else has been ‘superb’, ‘remarkable’, ‘surprising’ (in a good way) and ‘excellent’. I’ve even had a laparoscopy (keyhole surgery to check out yer wimminz' bits) and was told my womb was ‘flawless’ (absolutely flawless) and my fallopian tubes some of the most patent (ie open and ready for gripping sperm-meets-egg action) they’ve ever seen. Plus, there is no history of any fertility problems on the female side of my family (not so much as a miscarriage), they all started the menopause late or textbook-perfect age and all my female ancestors apart from my mother have all had children in their 40s. My periods are regular and I ovulate every single month and have a good egg supply left. My partner, M, is 28 *does funky Cougar Dance* and his semen analysis test results came higher than average. And yes, we are doing rude things regularly in the right hole at the right time. Neither of us have ever smoked, I am teetotal and M has about 5 small bottles of cider a year, I have IBS and food allergies so eat a very strict and healthy lifestyle (including the fact that I don’t consume any form of sugar or sweetener, not even honey) and he is one of those skinny weirdos who loves vegetables more than anything else and I am allergic to caffeine and hate coffee anyway and he has switched to decaff. We only use eco products around our home and toiletries-wise (if you discount my love of spendy make-up). Christ, we’re boring. So now, after a year of trying, I/we have the rubbish diagnosis of ‘Unexplained Infertility’.

This basically means that no-one has a fucking clue as to why I don’t look like a porpoise in maternity dungarees right now. I have been seeing an acupuncturist - Needles, as I call her - for nearly 4 months and here is what we think the problems are:

1) I have really shit health otherwise. An Endocrinal disorder that doesn't threaten my life or anything, but make me low-level bleeeeurgh all the time. And, brilliantly, means it'd be too dangerous for me to ever have IVF drugs. Oh yes, when I say that my body always has to be awkward and different, I ain't messin' around. It takes contrariness to a whole new (desperate) plane. My body is the Cyrano of all cutting-off-nose-to-spite-face-nesses.

2) I’ve just found out that my oestrogen is too high in the luteal phase (the bit after ovulation leading up to your period). This means that the womb is confused as to what it should be doing - ‘am I leading up to ovulation or am I building a lining up so that a fertilised egg can take hold? WTF is going on?’ - as oestrogen should be high leading up to ovulation and then drop away afterwards to let progesterone take over, fact fans. This shouldn’t ruin my chances, but doesn’t help and sorting it out involves all sort of lifestyle things which, as I have detailed above, I already do, so things on this score are a bit confusing at the mo.

And the one I personally worry about all the time:

3) I’m ‘a bit’ overweight. I was slightly overweight before we started trying for a baby (because I was starting to get mental with broodiness then and ate my way through it) and have managed to put on just over a stone. Always helpful. This is a combo of eating when depressed and - and I have the good grace to be ashamed of being this neurotic/self-defeating - I haven’t really tried dieting and have limited the exercise I was doing because you always read in fertility guides that you shouldn’t have a restricted diet (which I already do anyway) and that after you ovulate you shouldn’t do lots of exercise in case you’ve got preggers and... I dunno - it knocks ‘it’ loose or summat? I can’t even remember now. Add to this Chinese Medicine advising you to do absolutely fuck-all when you’re on your period and you have a recipe for making a slightly chubby, slightly lazy neurotic woman into a properly-chubby, properly-lazy neurotic woman. I would like to point out that I’m not huge - I don’t require a disability scooter or ‘reaching stick’ just yet. I can fit into normal sizes (not even the biggest) in normal high street stores like Topshop, etc., but I am 2 dress sizes bigger than I used to be. Thankfully/sadly, that used to be a thin one.

And lastly: 

4) Being so fucking neurotic and anxious and wanting a baby so fucking much that I’m stressing myself into infertility. Every cunt - and I mean every cunt - thinks they’re being helpful telling you that to ‘relax and it’ll happen’, not realising that the fury over incredibly unhelpful, insensitive, pointless and patronising comments like that create more stress than just about anything else on earth. As if things were that easy! As if you don’t hate yourself enough already! Let’s add guilt over farkin’ emotions to the deal! Now I can feel anxious about feeling anxious - joy! 

Oh, these idiots, who have either all got pregnant/got someone pregnant effortlessly when young or who have never even tried, themselves, to conceive, are so quick to tell you how easy it is to get pregnant if you just chill out a bit, but not a one of them has any advice about what you’re supposed to do instead of worrying, panicking and feeling sad when you’re v old, reproductive-wise, keep on being heartbroken month after month after month, virtually every advert, tv show and film has families and babies in them, everywhere you go there are babies and little kids and the media constantly bombards you with scare stories about female fertility, making you feel like you’re a monster for not being Mrs 1950s Housewife, etc., etc.

And believe me, I’ve asked. I am that arsey git who challenges people when they come out with blithe platitudes that hurt. And guess what? They never have any reply. Their answers are just to make themselves feel better, not you. And it’s irrelevant that the only thing that could actually make you feel better is seeing 2 lines appear on a test stick you’ve just pissed on...

So. There we go. Clear as mud. Boring as fuck. Self-pitying as hell. Now you know all that, I can get on with the fun whinging. Hmmmm, ‘fun whinging’ - isn’t that basically the purpose of all blogs?!