Barren Mare

The barn door

I thought I had always done a reasonably good job of keeping this blog anonymous. Today, I find out- not so much. I should have realised that sooner or later, someone from my real life was bound to seek it out or find out about it somehow. I'm more than a little disconcerted and frankly uncomfortable that the person in question chose to carry on reading it for some time without disclosing to me that they knew anything about it.

Ultimately I suppose I have only myself to blame- I am well aware that even something that attempts to be anonymous cannot be truly private if posted publicly for all to see. But- to use the best analogy I can come up with- it's one thing to walk around on a nudist beach, in the happy knowledge that you're entirely naked but who cares, because you don't know anybody and they don't know you, not really. It's another thing altogether to suddenly find yourself bumping into your boss and his wife or to discover that your cousin Bobby has spotted you from the neighbouring hotel and is watching you through a pair of binoculars. Time for a towel.

I'm not sure what to do about it. I was really needing this site again as a safe place to write and express myself. To-as my dear friend Anna put it, to give and receive support from people who have been there,who understand and can relate, albeit without necessarily having a "real life" relationship. But I know full well I'm going to have a problem carrying on if I have to self censor constantly, and to be honest I feel like I already do enough of it as it is. So I'm thinking here's my solution. I'll keep up what has been written until now. No point shutting the barn door after the mare has bolted. And I will keep posting generally with my towel on- I mean, I know you'll all be desperate to hear about my TSH results, right?  But from now on, anything that I feel is particularly sensitive content will be placed on on my second password protected Typepad blog site (which I set up a gazillion years ago and never really used). I'll post a link here every time such a post is available.

It's far from ideal, I know- but it's the best I can do under the circumstances, for now. You can email me at barrenmare at gmail dot com to request a password.

Here, hares?

Oh, internets, how I love you. I'm sorry if I haven't told you in such a long time but yet again you've proven your mettle in standing by me now. Thank you.

Having spent several days post lines a deux alternately weeping and having heart palpitations, coupled with a total loss of appetite and sleep, I realised quite quickly that I seemed to be experiencing a rather odd and extreme response to what was an entirely planned and hoped for pregnancy. It felt more like somebody had died, which is obviously not the direction we were aiming for.

When Botany woke up complaining about her ear again the next morning, I seized the opportunity to make a back-to- back appointment with the GP that day to have both her ear seen to again and to also to doublecheck if there was anything that could be done about my apparent veering into hormonal insanity. In the end, lovely Knox came along and scooped Botany off for a scooter ride after she'd had her ears inspected (short answer: some redness and possible goop in there, dose with Calpol) so I could speak to the GP without distraction.

The doctor was very nice- although by the end of the consultation he did have the look of someone trying to figure out how to extract the crazy allegedly pregnant lady from his office. Kind Doctor thinks I am having some hormonal reactions (no shit), which are proving rather overwhelming but that everything will calm down. As a concession to my prevailing anxiety about checking everything is OK in there, he's going to refer me as soon as possible to the midwife to get me booked into the system and possibly an early scan, assuming I even get that far.

As far as testing, since I was last on this rollercoaster, they now offer the nuchal scan and blood tests on the NHS, so at least I won't be forking over £350 plus of my own pennies to be told at the end that I had best get an amnio. In an ideal world I might have just skipped the whole nuchal malarkey and gone straight for CVS but according to Kind Doctor, they don't really do CVS all that routinely in Scotland and I would have to pay for it privately. The paying is not so much an issue, the lack of routine might be- since obviously you'd want someone really good carrying out the procedure rather than a practioner who has to look it up in the textbook to remind themselves what a cervix looks like. If any of my readers in the UK have any tips or recommendations on this score as to the CVS option- even if I have to travel to, say, London for it- do let me know, mmkay? I am kind of resigned to the strong possibility that I will be doing the nuchal and then results depending my abdomen meeting up with a long thin amnio needle around 16 weeks but I would be far happier, you know, not to unless the odds are looking decidely dicey at that point. Assuming we even get that far (I can't stop caveating).

In the end, apart from setting up the referral, mostly what Kind Doctor let me do was just talk. It all just came out in a jumble- all of it- panic, fear, worries about abnormalities, feeling too old for this, feeling like I was screwing up my life having been there done that and not wanting to go back. And funnily, by the end of my little verbal outpouring, I felt much better about all it. Much, much better for having out that large lump of fear in the back of the throat. I realised two things: the first is that a lot of it is residual psychological fretting from going through what was a largely traumatic time with Botany. The other is that there are two people involved in this event, and one of them is Knox, who desperately wants a child- and why shouldn't he? It's not all about me.

By the time I went to bed that night, I was consumed by desire for this pregnancy to work out ok, so much so that I couldn't sleep again but for slightly different reasons. So I seem to be back on a fairly even keel, for now. My mantra at the moment are all cheesy cliches and they are working pretty at the moment. One day at a time. Enjoy it while it lasts. What will be will be.

Next time: the story of telling Knox! I can reveal he knew slightly before aromatherapy massage guy- but only just. Later that weekend I also proceeded to tell some random dude from whom Knox bought a surfboard (since it was a good excuse for me not to buy the second spare one he had in his van, even though Knox went back for it later anyway). Then closely followed by- OH, HELLO INTERNETS- the whole world.

Fluffy bunnies, flee!

I've finally figured out the key to wreaking life-changing events upon myself: decide to hang up the blog. That was the intention- at least for awhile until I rediscovered some mojo. I've toyed with that notion a great many times over the last few months but I was really quite far down the path of actually doing it this time. I even had the "going-on-hiatus" post all drafted up (with a cute picture at the end! With a beach scene and everything!). But something made me hesitate to hit the publish button- so I slept on it.

I had an appointment the next day for a aromatherapy massage- a long overdue Christmas present from Knox. And given that I knew there was a possibility this month, it crossed my mind that it was a good a time as any to do the very last pregnancy test in the box from an earlier bulk *bay purchase-though like many things, my enthusiasm for testing had fallen by the wayside somewhat in the last couple of months.

And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but two lines. Two. The second test line on the faint side but clear enough to be seen in the picture I took on my iphone a couple hours later. I promptly ran out, purchased four more tests and used up three over the course of the weekend. All positive- and by today, quite obviously so. Whaddya know, I am apparently pregnant (standard issue caveat: for now).

Now for some frank confessions- lest the perception be that I am deliriously happy about all this and fluffy bunnies start dancing the conga down a pregnancy ticker at the bottom of the page. I am, to be honest, COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT, quite spectacularly so. I was excited- wildly elated- for about two hours and then I heard the baby next door crying. It was like an anvil crashing down on my head, followed by overpowering panic. Oh my god. Oh my gooood. But I wanted this, didn't I?  And then it was like having one of those crash zoom moments, where the past three and half years of Botany's birth, newbornness, nightmare behaviour from 18 months to 2 years, weaning, potty training -zip through my brain in slow motion- and I was suddenly kneecapped with panic at going through all of it- any of it- again. The prospect of more sleep deprivation of the type experienced in the not too distant past makes me feel all weepy, not to mention exhausted even typing this.

And then there are the statistics and don't get me started on that. I imagine that even a few minutes of searching "pregnant over 40" on Google is enough to send even the most stalwart diving for cover under the kitchen table. It could all end tomorrow. The internets say there is a reasonable chance that it will- or that there will be problems, horrid problems. Of course, in the interests of balanced reporting the internets also say otherwise, a fact I will try to remember when I am done breathing into a paper bag. And leaving all of that aside, there is the need to sort out, once for all, the underlying ambivalence I have had this whole time about the prospect of a second child which I stuffed away because lalalalala, I figured I was too old, too past it to get pregnant to really worry about it actually happening.

That's where a blog comes in, and I think I am going to need to write at least a little about it, in search of some form of clarity, for as long as it lasts. I think fluffy bunnies may be in short supply initially. If aspects of it seem in any way whiny or ungrateful (because I am actutely aware how it might seem that way, especially since the opportunity that has landed in my lower lap is one many people would give anything for) then this is maybe the time to start to look- oh, over there.