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2003-03-25 - 6.00pm��previous entry��next entry
Thurs. 20th March (backdated) - Starting earlier?
Thanks April, Mia and Lizzy for your guestbook entries - Mia, yours made me laugh :) And Lizzy, my sympathies over your thrashing husband!!! Mine does that a lot too, but I think Dave is probably worse by the sound of it!!! April, I really appreciated your message (yay for cloth!!) and I'm praying that you will be able to conceive this year :)
Okay now, this a waaaaay back-dated entry (well, it feels like years to me!) because my very stupid modem died and I spent all of the last WEEK on various "help"lines and ferrying the computer around in my car trying to get it fixed. But noooo, it couldn't be fixed (not without ridiculous costs anyway). So I had to - oh poo, I'll rant about this in my normal diary (!), let's just say I have it sorted out at last and I'm back online (woohoo!) so here's the entry I wrote on Thursday 20th (even though today is Tuesday 25th!!!). I wrote an entry the day before too, which I've posted just before this one. I will be writing again really soon though :)
Thursday 20th March 2003, 11.30pm
I got THE most adorable soft popper vest in the post today (eBay). It is cream and ribbed, and it has Winnie the Pooh embroidered on the front with his name underneath. I should post a photo, but the computer is up the spout and I can't get online, so I won't for now. Anyway, the vest is for a tiny baby, from 5-7lbs. Yeah so I could have a baby who is 8lb at birth, but I don't believe it. I am convinced Neil and I are practically genetically incapable of producing a baby much over 7lbs at birth. We both have small builds and we each weighed under 6lbs at birth so yeah. The vest is so so so cute. I put a "filled out" newborn cloth nappy and wrap inside it to see if it fitted and it does :) So cute. I am so broody.
News today, because Neil and I have been talking about things, and I have some feelings I want to write down. I can't tell if anyone left messages in my guestbook for me to say thank you for or comment on, because our modem is broken and I can't get online till it's fixed, so I'm writing this offline (grrr!). But anyway, I am sort of feeling less "I can't imagine it" today. I bumped into someone I haven't seen for a while at the supermarket this afternoon, and she asked if I was back doing my nursing. I said no and she asked if I was going to. I said I was planning to have a baby. (I love this part) Her eyes shot to my belly and for a second she had that lovely excited look that I can't WAIT to really see in people's eyes when I talk to them, and she said, "Are you pregnant?!!" But poo, I had to say, "Not yet!" Bah. Down went the voice-pitch and up came the eyes. She cheerfully warned me about how it never happens when you expect it to, and not to be too disappointed when we can't conceive right when we want to. This is getting me down. Call me naive (does that have 2 'i's in it?) but until not that long ago I was fully expecting to get pregnant pretty much when we had a go at getting pregnant. This did not seem an odd or foolish idea to me. I knew there were people who had trouble conceiving. But the reason I was of this mindset was that it's all I know from my family. I don't know anyone in my family who's tried more than once to conceive without hitting the jackpot so to speak. Except Granny after my Daddy was born, but that was a rhesus neg thing apparantly, in those days. So yeah, I just thought no different, from what all my relatives have experienced. I figured since that's how it went for them, why shouldn't it for me?
Naive? Silly?
I don't know. I think it was a good mindset. Well, I think it was anyway. It was positive and optimistic, and that's good for trying for a baby. But now I can't seem to think like that anymore and it's upsetting me. Everyone keeps on telling me it didn't happen for them like that, and some even go so far as to say "it won't" happen for me like that. Like they're saying, "Oh didn't you know?! Nothing works like THAT" and I feel squashed and silly and humiliated in some way for having been so optimistic. I am finding it hard. People at Babycentre say how "foolish" they were to think they could conceive when they planned to. I read diaries where people have tried long and hard to conceive, some with success at last and some still trying. When I announce joyfully that we are planning to TTC in the summer, people respond with warning and cautions and things to just get my anxiety levels that bit perkier. How helpful. I have friends who have tried without success. Before, my heart just went out to them and I ached for them to be able to have a baby, but somehow it didn't affect me in my own path because I still figured I would not have trouble conceiving. I know nobody thinks they will, but still. What with my family..... But now somehow I can't seem to help letting it get to me. In the last few weeks I've become progressively more and more worried that we might not be able to conceive. Why should I expect to conceive? That's the message I'm getting. But surely it should be the other way round? - surely I have every �right to expect to conceive, I mean, we haven't even TRIED yet! Every time I exercise such optimism, somebody bashes me down for it. Ack, I shouldn't say it like that, nobody "bashes" me, it's all friendly chat or advice. But I feel worn down by it now and it's affecting how I feel about having a baby. I don't like it :(
Poo. So I am going to try reeeally hard to shut out negative thoughts that I might not conceive, or that I shouldn't expect it, and focus on the optimistic side. I am going to try and fully expect to conceive when we try. If we don't I will deal with the emotional repurcussions then and we'll try again, but I don't want to think of that anymore. I want to remember how straight-forward it was for my family. I don't want to get stressy about it when the time comes, because I read that this does not help the chances of conceiving. I feel kind of cross because I was doing great with this mindset and then other people squashed it, inadvertantly, but they squashed it all the same. Pah, this is a rant isn't it?! I'll stop it then. And I don't mean to be insensitive to people who really have had trouble conceiving or who still haven't managed to yet. I don't want to do that. I just have a zillion feelings about it all of a sudden, from my own perspective. Hmmm.
The other change of plan is that we are going to TTC a month earlier than planned. Which is kind of a big change to my plan really, since I've been really July-focused since Christmas! I would love to conceive in July so that I have as much of my first trimester as possible out of the summer heat, and so that I'm in the second trimester during Christmas and family birthdays, and so that I have an April baby. That was planned carefully. If I don't conceive in July the same would work fine for August or September. After that we could be talking morning sickness over Christmas/birthdays, and side-of-house third trimester in the hotter weather. So I am hoping to conceive in the summer. To conceive in June would slightly alter that because I could be pukey (if I am) in hot weather, which generally makes me feel pukey and knackered anyway so that would not be so great. And we'd have a March baby. Due this week next year actually, according to the fertile parts of my cycle. How weird. I wanted a spring/summer baby rather than too close to the rest of the family's birthdays (Jan and Feb), but actually when I think of having a baby this time next year, and I look around me, I think it's a pretty neat time of year to bring a new life into the world. Spring is in the air and it might still be chilly but the spring flowers are out and they're beautiful, and the buds are swelling on the trees, and I just know it would be lovely. So yeah, maybe that'll be good too.
Another reason for trying a month earlier than planned is sort of to have a "trial run", which sounds ridiculous to me as I write this!! But it's sort of like, I want to prove to myself one way or the other that I can conceive, preferably before the much-hoped-for July window, and if I don't that month then I have three more months that are well planned to keep trying. I refuse to go down the path of "what if we still haven't after that?" but just for the sake of argument, I would say we'll cross that bridge if it happens to be there at the time. And that's all I want to say on the matter. Righty!
So now that Neil and I have talked about TTC in June, and we are both happy with going ahead then, I seem to have shifted gear in my focus. This gives us three months till we start trying to conceive. Exactly three months actually. Four more periods, since I'm due another one in a week. It means I need to get much more serious about the fitness plan. At least I am used to walks now, but I need to do more than a 10 minute walk every day. I am feeling a lot more motivated to walk longer distances and to go swimming now. Also I need to get a job, now. July seemed ages away, and I know it's only a month earlier, but there really is hardly any time to earn some money before we get going. I'm going to try some office temping (what joy) for some quick earnings, even if it's not earning much, it's quick work that I don't have to wait around for too much, and it's something towards our finances and stuff. So yeah, it's good. New focuses and all that. Of course we could still change our minds and get scared and put it off till July or August again! But hopefully we'll try in June. I am scared to even try! I just feel like it's all been theory so far, and there's been no heightened emotions and stuff from trying to conceive, and wondering if we're pregnant or not. Getting into the "oh my gosh we're really doing it" stuff is kind of scary, but exciting all the same. I still can't imagine we really will sometimes.
Well that's all I think. I will write again if there's any more another time. And hopefully post this soon, as soon as the modem gets fixed. If it isn't fixed for a while this might be seriously backdated!
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