Cravings? Not likely

Poor Mrs T has not been feeling well at all. I’m sure if food cravings would be likely to kick in just yet, but she’s not fancying food at all really. She is eating, but has to persuade herself to do so. And the nausea is pretty much constant.

We’ve not heard anything yet about the arrangements for the ‘early’ scan, which should be happening some time next week. It was over two weeks ago that we saw the GP, and he’s supposed to have referred us to the midwifery team at the hospital and arranged the scan, but we’ve no idea if anything’s happened yet. I’m hoping she’ll phone to find out what’s happening.

Sharing Secrets

For a while I've been looking forward to the time when I can stop using a pseudonym to write this and start using our real names, but it seems that I may never get to do this. We were chatting about letting people know about the pregnancy, and Mrs T simply doesn't feel she'll be comfortable with people ever knowing about what's led up to where we are now. It's a shame for me, as I've been looking forward to eventually letting friends and family see all that I've been writing here, but clearly I'll need to respect her wishes.

Tricky thing to my mind is that fact that we'll now have to keep track of who knows what, as there are several versions of the story "out there". It would seem much more straightforward to me to simply tell all.

This weekend we've created another version: our independent midwife friend is here for the weekend with her husband and their gorgeous one-year-old, and Mrs T has confided in her. However, she's only shared part of the story, and I had to check before saying too much exactly what they knew and what they didn't. We've told them that the hospital admitance last year was a suspected ruptured ectopic pregnancy (ie, the truth) rather than an ovarian cyst (the cover-story), and therefore they know we've been trying for at least a year. But that's it. No five-year history; no IUI, no potential IVF.

I'm going to find this hard.

On a more positive note, we've chatted a lot this weekend about the pregnancy itself and about hopes and fears and lots else, and Mrs T is much more positive as a result. We're very glad to have our friend on board as a support and source of all knowledge. She has a wealth of professional expertise as a midwife and lactation consultant, and has a holistic/organic approach that we're very comfortable with.

Morning sickness

Okay, so why do they call it morning sickness? Mrs T has been feeling pretty nauseous for a good few days now, and it certainly ain't limited to the mornings! Still, we're told it's a good sign: an indication that the necessary hormones are being produced in earnest. (Although one book we've read suggests it's an inbalance of minerals that can can be sorted with good nutrition or supplements.) A couple of days ago she had no sickness - and of course worried that it was a sign of things falling apart again. Thankfully (?) the sickness returned the next day.

When we saw he GP the other day he did mention (after checking Mrs T's age, 36) that we'd be 'offered' some additional tests to check for any genetic abnormalities. We've spoken about this, and think it's unlikely we'd agree to any extra tests. Neither of us would consider a termination, so what would be the point?

Back to business

Well, now we're back from our trip, so I'm back online.

Having the time away gave us plenty of opportunities to talk about all manner of things - our hopes, our plans, our fears and so on - and I know there are a whole load more to talk about over the coming weeks (and, hopefully, months and years). One thing we discussed was telling people. Mrs T is really undecided about telling her Mum when we see her at the end of next week. On the positive side, it would give us an opportunity to explain the problems of last summer, when we didn't tell the truth about Mrs T's operation. On the negative, it would build up her hopes and, if things go wrong again this time, will mean she will always be wanting to know how it's going in the future. That's one of the biggest reasons we've never told anyone we were trying in the first place.

We've a really good friend who's an independent midwife, so we'd toyed with the idea of telling her. After all, it would seem silly to let the benefit of all her experience pass us by. I'm really pleased that Mrs T did, last night, phone and tell her. She wanted to speak to her before her appointment with her GP this morning, to run some questions by here and seek professional and personal advice. We couldn't hire her professionally, as she lives too far away and I can't imagine it would be good professional ethics anyway. (I'm also not sure we could afford her fee!) But she said to Mrs T "I'll be there! I'll block out some time in my diary and If at all possible I'll be there with you" which is simply the best news. She has, of course, been sworn to secrecy.

Mrs T's GP was good this morning. He's arranging blood tests for her thyroid function, as that will need more closely monitoring during pregnancy and, because of her history, arranging an early scan at about 8-9 weeks. He also confirmed that we don't have to have the baby at the nearest NHS hospital. Some will think it's an odd decision; we can see the hospital from our house so for convenience it's perfect. However, Mrs T simply doesn't want to use it. Thankfully there's another hospital in a town about 25 minutes away that's part of the same trust and we can opt to have it there instead.

Doctor's appointment

Mrs T was please to be able to make an appointment with her own GP when she phoned yesterday. She often has to wait a while before getting to see him, and isn’t keen on seeing anyone else if she can help it, but this time he could fit her in easily. In the end she made an appointment for next Wednesday when we return from a long weekend away celebrating our 12th anniversary.

We’d both been thinking about the fact that this pregnancy means we won’t be going ahead with IVF in January, but we won’t let the hospital know until things are a bit more established. Even if this pregnancy doesn’t stick we’ve demonstrated that we can conceive without assistance, so IVF simply doesn’t seem appropriate any more. Okay, so maybe it took us a long time to get here, but we can do it. Mrs T pointed out that it’s taken about a year both times: the first conception was about a year after our two attempts at IUI treatment, and this one is just over a year after the miscarriage.

Here we go...

4:30 am: I am barely awake when Mrs T comes back from the bathroom with, "Okay, you can get excited now".

Now she believes it.

We've now fished out all our books and leaflets from last time and started to read up on diet, nutrution (Mrs T's biggest concern, other than the understandable worries about what happened before, was "what should I be eating?") and much else.

A chart in one leaflet tells us our due date is around 27 March 2007. That seems a long time away, but I expect if things go smoothly (please!) then it'll be here in no time.

Getting used to the idea

It really is happening. Mrs T has been wary of admitting it, but it really is happening.

We’ve had a very busy weekend, with friends visiting and trips out, and she said last night that she was glad to have had something to take her mind off “what might be happening inside” her. She’s also mentioned that her lateness could easily be down to the stressful last week of term she’s just worked through. (I agreed that this could well make her late, but wouldn’t account for the positive test of last Thursday.) She didn’t seem convinced. But now we’ve got a couple of days further down the line (day 35 today) and her temperature is staying up with no sign of anything happening, she’s allowing herself to believe that it really might be true. At least, she asked me to pop into the chemist at lunchtime today and pick up another test kit. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it went.

She also asked me to tell one of our friends. Just one. Mrs T has not been going to church for some time now, her faith having taken a real bashing after all she’s been through, but she did ask me to ask this particular (from the list a while back) to “pray lots”. Said friend was suitably excited, but very good at keeping it under wraps as I told her the little there is to tell so far.

It really does feel great to be reporting things like this. At last A Nice Cup Of Tea can once again become “The Diary of an Expectant Father.”

"Don't get excited..."

... we're Mrs T's first words to me this morning, as she came back from the bathroom with two pink lines on a test. Hey, come on now, MrsT: I've been getting excited for the last couple of days. No real reason to until this morning, as she's not technically even 'late' yet (we were expecting today to be day one of yet another cycle).



Of course it is very early, and we musn't get too excited yet. In fact, in the real world (I still consider blog-land to be outside of "the real world") we won't even be telling anyone for a while. Anyone who reads this here is privvy to a very big secret!

One year on.

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of what Mrs T described last night as "The worst day of our lives" (which you can read about here). It also means I've been keeping this blog just over a year, as I started when we'd just found out she was pregnant. She soon became, of course, no longer pregnant, and to date this remains the case: it's day three today if I'm not mistaken.

I sometimes feel a bit lost in all this.

Nothing to report. Wish there was.

I really would love to post here more often, but unfortunately there just isn't anything much to say at the moment. Well, there's plenty going on with the two of us, but this blog is intended to be about pregnancy - and our quest for that is still just ticking along. The first two posts I made, back in June last year, were bursting with excitement. We had an exciting secret back then: now it's just a sad one.

I'd love to be saying stuff like that again.