To my Baby-to-be

I just could not get to sleep last night. I'm not sure exactly what it was that was keeping me away. I was tired but I wasn't sleepy and things kept going round in my mind.

One thing that kept coming back to me was a little scrapbook that I bought back when we first decided to try for a baby. A friend of mine was put on bed rest while she was pregnant with twins and used some of her time writing letters to her unborn babies (they're five now and love hearing about their adventures before they were born). I thought this was a lovely idea and resolved to do the same while waiting for my sprog to pop.

Well, I've been waiting over a year now to paste my first letter into that book and it's kind of sad to think of it just sitting there, totally empty and unloved. And last night I couldn't sleep, so I sat up and wrote this, a letter to my as-yet unconceived child:

Dear Baby-to-be,

You're just a twinkle in your Daddy's eye but we still love you more than anything in the world. We've been waiting twelve long months to meet you and it's strange to think that once we know you're on the way, we'll still have to wait another nine before you'll arrive. But we'll be patient because we're getting really good at waiting.

We're doing everything that we can to make a good place for you and I know that you'll come along when you're good and ready to. You clearly take after your mother because you've not even been conceived yet and you're not only incredibly stubborn but your time-keeping is as bad as mine too, kiddo!

Do it in your own time, little one, we're ready for you but I guess it's taking you a little bit of time to be ready for us. We'll just have to work on your organisation when you get here.

But try not to take too long, I have it on good authority that your Granda wants a little person to spoil rotten at Christmas. I hope this is the last one we have to spend without you.

Hope you're on your way soon.

Your Mummy-to-be
xxxxxx

Something beginning with Pee...

Lots of girls have talked about taking vitamins to help them conceive so I decided to jump on the bandwagon and picked myself up some Pregnacare Conception. I wasn't the most discerning shopper, it was the one I recognised, it was cheaper than anything else and I was in a hurry because there was Christmas shopping to be done. I picked it up (and some smelly stuffs for Hubby's birthday) and paid.

The girl who served me couldn't have been less interested in what I was buying and put my shopping into a nice see through bag so that everyone in Glasgow could see exactly what I was getting up to. So I stuffed the box into the pair of socks I'd bought for Hubby (which then led to a minor panic when I got home and thought I'd lost the expensive vitamins!)

So that night I took my first Pregnacare pill. Now they don't tell you much on the box. Yes, it's got plenty of folic acid in it (just right for a growing baby-to-be), it's got enough iron in it to sink the Titanic and it's also got a wonderful host of other vitamins which have quite an unusual effect on your body.

It turns your pee yellow.

Now, I know what you're thinking (those of you who haven't tried Pregnacare at least), you pee is meant to be yellow. But honestly, nothing really compares to the fantastic yellow colour your pee will assume. I was at least a little prepared, I'd heard from other people on the pregnancy forums, but all the same, you're never really ready for the moment when you stumble to the loo at seven in the morning and the toilet bowl looks as though it belongs to someone trying to dispose of plutonium or something.

Think glowsticks, think workmen's jackets, think of the yellowest thing you can think of and double it. That's what your pee looks like on Pregnacare.

Pregnacare pee actually matches my bathroom decor quite well.

And who said that trying to conceive wasn't exciting?

Packing your bag, booking your tickets & realising you've forgotten your passport: Beginning the TTC Journey

It's been nearly a year since Hubby and I first started trying for a baby and it feels a little like you've got yourself all ready to get on your flight to DisneyLand when you've suddenly realised that you've forgotten your passport, or the plane hasn't got any wings, or you've left all your foreign money behind. Whatever. It feels like we're not actually going anywhere, even though we're already to go.

Last December I thought it would be as easy as just binning the condoms, and that would be it. Growing up I was let to believe that if you looked at a boy in the wrong way, you'd get pregnant. You shouldn't have sex during your period because those little swimmers would still get in and cause trouble. Condoms weren't infallible because apparently the sperm were armed with teeny tiny machetes and would probably be able to fight their way through. Those little guys were programmed to get you pregnant and they were going to do it no matter how many obstacles you put up to stop them; you were better off just avoiding men altogether and becoming a nun until you were ready to have a family.

I didn't want to get ahead of myself of course, I didn't imagine that I would get knocked up that quickly. I thought it would take us a couple of months to get a result, I did have a vague idea about how these things worked after all. I imagined that I'd probably be heavily pregnant by about this time, making plans for the newest arrival to our family (all the while secretly hoping that it would happen much sooner and instead we'd be spending Christmas with a real life new arrival).

Perhaps because of that I wasn't too worried when my period came. And then I did some work that could have put an unborn baby at risk, so I was kind of relieved when there was no baby the next cycle. We were trying, but we weren't really trying hard.

That prompted flashbacks to my exams and school and the fact that I had it drummed into me that if you wanted to see results, you needed to put some effort in. So that's how we came to here. Instead of frolicking in a pool at DisneyLand, I'm floundering in a pool of acronyms. My mornings begin with taking my temperature, intimate moments are punctuated with pauses to apply liberal amounts of Preseed, and peeing in a pot has become a regular part of my routine.

My little book where I track E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G TTC-related.

So that's where I am now, almost a year after we set out on this miracle journey, and I have to admit I'm quite enjoying the ride. I've learnt things about myself that I never thought I'd need to know and met some pretty fantastic people along the way. But I'm kind of hoping that I've moved on from this stage come this time next year.