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Waiting

Written on 22/11/2009 15:44:30 by

Kimmysmee

July 2009
I_ve been watching my body for weeks now, every twinge, every spot, every mood_ Depending on where I am I_ve checked my boobs, physically, by squeezing a little to check their sensitivity or with a little mental scan to see if they really are sore and then tried that on against the measures described on the internet. Nope, not quite sore enough to make me think my jusband bullied them in the night, but weirdly full feeling. Those online tests are a mine field of ambiguity_ yes, your tiredness could be down to pregnancy, or it could be due to environmental factors (you have been up all night researching pregnancy symptoms which you are trying on for size) Do you have diarrhoea or constipation? What to do if you have both on alternating days? Do you know I think both are symptoms of pregnancy and an impending period? No wonder men don_t understand women, our bodies are alien even to us, like watching a fizzing firework waiting to see if the fuse has lit this month or whether it will go _pffft_ and fall over again. We will then need to spend time resetting, coddling it to life with various superstitions and incantations said over it to make it shoot into life and the trajectory to parenthood to begin.

I spent the day yesterday obsessing over whether the stuff I was seeing a week early was an early period, spotting or something new to focus on _ implantation bleeding. The internet can make anything sound feasible and you start imagining that that is what you have, preferring to read the corroborating evidence rather than the stuff that refutes what you would like to believe is true. I joked with a doctor friend who has an 8 month old baby that we should come with litmus paper on our tummies. Purple means that you are pregnant, there are no shades of purple, just purple and you know. There are those who will say that peeing on a stick is the same, but having taken a few of those furtive, hopeful, wishful tests, it is nothing as decisive when you aren_t. You read the instructions hunched over the loo, concentrating on peeing in a nice stream over the little section it has allowed for (oh, if only it were all that simple _ male manufacturers take note _ women can rarely pee in a straight line, we just ain_t built that way) Then you watch line number one appear cheering you on with an _okay you managed that bit, the test is working_ stain spreading. And then you wait, and wait, and check it again, and wait and then there you are squinting hopefully at the second space willing a line to appear. In certain light you think you can see it then, it is just a dust mote or a trick and it isn_t there. Crueller still is the one that says _pregnant_ or _not pregnant_. The little _not_ appears and you can feel the reproach _ _silly twit for thinking that your period being a day late means that you are_ and then, just to prove the point, your period arrives, breathless and apologetic explaining that it lost track of time, was busy discussing the state of your bikini line with your ovaries and is now actually here, okay?

Don_t get me wrong, we have not been trying for long enough yet for it to alert any medical professionals to there being a problem, but 6 months of checking your period is long enough to know that I am certifiable towards the end of the 28 days. Everyone says, _just relax, it will happen_, just like us smug married couples say to the singletons who have been on yet another disappointing date. And it did for us, we met and the love alchemy just happened, overnight and immediately _ we were a couple and married in just over a year. But our eggs and sperm seem content to flirt and date with no strings attached, no commitment and no baby starting _.. yet_.

I_m awake at 5.01am because I can_t sleep, it is Saturday and my period should be making its appearance today. I have the weird soreish boobs, a funnyish taste in my mouth, spotting which can_t be pinned down to a specific colour spectrum, the triple joy of constipation, diarrhoea and weeing more than normal, and I don_t feel heavy and pre period like. I_ve been having them for 20 years, I know what my period is supposed to feel like.

Oh, I just thought of another invention _ pregnancy test panty liners _ they can tell what the emissions mean _ you just put them in and leave it up to them to figure out whether that is implantation, a lazy uterus (this was one of my favourite explanations for one week early brown hued bleeding. Like I don_t have enough to worry about, now my uterus is not working hard enough and needs some personal training from me too) or the strange beginnings of my period presenting in a whole new way. _Don_t worry_, says the doctor I went to see, _maybe this is how your period is now_. Last year it was punctual, this year it is trying being more free spirited on for size _ just what I need, a period that is into _finding itself_ just when I need 28 day cycles to set my biological clock by. If it co-operates I can give it 9 months off to go travelling and come back all clear about what it wants_.

I daren_t even have a test in the house, sitting there in the cupboard, all smug and shiny in its packaging, waiting to deliver the good or bad news. If they were I would have been through at least one already _just in case_. My poor husband has been very patient with it all, putting up with my bulletins and pronouncements, getting his hopes up about me being able to cycle hard with him then cautioning him that I may not be able to because the internet says not to let me heart beat more than 140 beats a minute while exercising. I can walk and make it do that, what about those people who jog through their pregnancy? I_m sure I_ve done that to my heart rate while doing yoga, oh who or what to believe? And this is all before we have any conclusive proof that there is even a need to guard anything.

Just as bad as the _smug marrieds_ are those people who are turning up around me pregnant, who came off the pill, on their first go managed to conceive, and are now posting pictures of the squirming little mite on the ultrasound scan. I greedily devour these waiting for my own little miracle to appear so I too can make the happy pronouncement and begin the passage to motherhood. It_s been a long time coming and I_m ready_.

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