Week 6 approaches

It's Saturday night and I was supposed to be going out, but I am so tired I could sleep in the middle of a Royal Wedding party. This exhaustion is like being flu-ridden or recovering from some dreadful operation.  Bizarrely, I feel glad to feel it.  I'm staying in tonight with hot milk, a good book and my laptop.  Like a saddo.  Thinking this is going to be my life for a while and not really missing having a wine or being in buzzy company.  Yes, definitely a saddo, but a pregnant saddo and I'm very grateful for that.

So this week has been a bit difficult. At work and at home it's like a hideous game of Russian Roulette every time I go to the loo.  Over aware of every twang, poke, dull ache and stab.  Worried when I feel period pain style cramps and worried when I feel ok because that signifies the absence of pregnancy symptoms.  In short, I'm just as much of a basket case now I am pregnant as I was trying to get pregnant.  I wonder if other women who miscarried late, or indeed at any time, feel this level of anxiety when they fall pregnant again.  It's going to be a rocky road if I don't get a handle on this - I won't be in a fit state to look after a baby.  So, what to do?  Well, I've stopped reading the forums after my friend D gave me a row.   He's in Sexual Health and used to giving advice to bolshy teens with too many hormones and not enough knowledge, so I don't present much of a challenge. I have also had a stern word with myself and had a good read of my favourite book for times like this - 'The Art of Happiness' by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler.  Great chapter on suffering.  Read it and realise how insignificant you are. Yep, it's up to fate now.  If it's meant to be, it will be.  If not, I will deal with it the way I have dealt with every other little piece of Hell that has come my way over the last two years.  I have also decided that, for me, if my little baby does not make it into this world I won't try again. I can't put myself through it another time if it goes wrong once more, but I do know that, if that happens, I will shuffle off this mortal coil knowing I made the best attempt at being a mother that I could. 

My thoughts have also turned to being a single mum to be.  It's like this - when you learn a new word or fact you see or hear it everywhere and when you break up with someone, it's cosy couples everywhere you look.  Suddenly, everywhere I look there are loved up couples with tiny newborns, toddlers or bumps in the waiting.  It's odd.  It has hit me that there will be nobody with me at my first scan, not unless I invite someone, but it feels too personal for that.  Now I am finally pregnant it's brought back thoughts of my ex partner, how we went to the scan together and how his face looked when he saw our baby for the first time.  It did make me very sad.  To make matters even weirder, he contacted me on the very day I found out I was pregnant, after an agreed silence.  He wants to stand good by his offer of friendship and meet for a catch up.  I have made excuses about meeting up, preferring the safety of email chat.  The reason is simple enough, it seems too odd to meet him when I am pregnant knowing that he won't be the one to go through it with me like last time.  I'm also scared he has news of his own about his relationship with, let's call her The Blonde Teenager, and I don't need, or want, to hear it.  So, I am wimping out for now and keeping him at a healthy distance.  This is my path now and he isn't on it.  Yes, repeat again with meaning please.

I am quite scared about what lies ahead and how I will manage.  Even though I carefully researched everything, read all the books I could find on being a single mother by choice (there aren't too many of those kicking about) and thought it all through, the view from here looks a little different now.  But...I am excited and amazed that I have had this second chance and the thing is, who knows what will happen and where it will take me.  Again, repeat with meaning please.  In all honesty though, I am excited, but I am terrified too and if you're in the same boat as me I hope you can relate to that!

In my next post I want to talk about my donor.  It's brought a few interesting issues to the fore and I think it would be good to share them.  Till then.