Plus One More

I don’t think I can hold this news in any longer or else I will burst!

I am Pregnant with my second child!!!!!!!!!

It been a long two year journey to get here but get here we did in the end. Now where do I start?

When my daughter was a year and a half I finally made the conscious decision that I was ready to have another baby – before that I just wasn’t ready. I had found it difficult to cope being a first time mom and in hindsight I think I suffered a bit from post natal depression.

After about a year of trying nothing had happened. I began to wonder if anything was the matter – after all I got pregnant the first time without even thinking about it. Could it be the fact that I went on the Pill after I’d had my first child? Am I not relaxed enough (why does everyone tell you to ‘relax’ when you are trying for a baby?)? Have I put on weight? Am I too old? All sorts of thoughts were swirling around my head. Then in November of last year, bingo, I got pregnant but sadly I miscarried a few weeks later. However this helped get the ball rolling.

The next 10 months were filled with endless medical tests being carried out on me and my husband. Urine tests, sperm tests, blood tests, external scans, internal scans, internal examinations, and a hysterosalpingogram (HSG). On my medical notes, I was put in the category of Secondary Infertility. By this time any passion between the sheets had become a mechanical chore. There is something about trying for a baby for a long time and nothing happening that acts as a real passion killer. You get to a stage where you ask yourself what the point is.

But I think what I hated the most was

1. Constantly being asked by people, ‘So when is number two coming?’ and


2. Having the fact pointed out to me that I already had a beautiful little girl so I should be grateful.

Both situations elicited the same response from me, Piss Off! But I never voiced it of course; I just smiled through very tight lips and changed the subject.

(Listen, if you have a friend or sister who is trying for a child, please, please do not keep asking when number two is coming, or reminding them of what they already have.)

At the end of all these tests, the results showed that both my husband and I were okay. There was a slight possibility that I may have ovarian cysts but this turned out to be a false alarm (thank goodness).

I had my final visit with my Consultant Gynaecologist in September and I was prescribed a four month supply of the drug Clomid. All we now had to do was wait for my next period, take one Clomid tablet a day for five days and have lots of sex for the next twelve. Sounds fun, huh?

Within me, I balked at the idea of having to take a drug to get pregnant – I wanted to get pregnant naturally. But I had no choices left open to me. Prayers had long since ended and resignation had slowly but surely set in.

So I clutched my prescription for my Clomid and headed for the nearest pharmacy with the words of my consultant ringing in my ears:

‘Just chill out (yes she said that *smile*), relax (oh no) and the next time I see you, I want to see you with a baby.’ But (there is always a but) she added, ‘If after four months you are still not pregnant, we will have to refer you to the infertility clinic.’

Cheery news. What baffled me all the way through the numerous tests was how a perfectly normal fertile woman like myself, could suddenly become infertile.

I brought home the little white cardboard box with the word CLOMID printed on it in bold blue letters and sat it on my shelf and waited for my next period to arrive. And I waited, and waited and waited.

10 days late I dared to let this thought creep into my head ‘Could I be pregnant?’ It was a quiet thought but it carried so much hope. I approached my stash of pregnancy test strips (I had ordered hundreds of them during the period I was undergoing all those tests) and pulled out one of the white foil packets. Oh, how many times had I done this and gotten a negative result which left me devastated every time?

I tore open the foil packet, took a wee sample, and stuck the test strip into it and squeezed my eyes shut; please, please, please, please, please. Five seconds later, I pulled out the strip. I watched the wee soak its way up the strip past the control line and past the test line. Yes, there was the control line – a bright red – but wait, there was a SECOND LINE – the test line! POSITIVE!! I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t.

I so didn’t believe it that over the next four days I carried out four more pregnancy tests which all gave me the same results. At last, I could believe it. Then and only then did I break the news to my husband. We had done it and without Clomid!

Needless to say, we are both very happy and I wanted to share some of that happiness with you.

And for those of you who caught on to my unusual Haiku of simple pleasures (now you know why it was a simple pleasure for me) and congratulated me, thank you very much.