conception

It's been a very busy week...

...with co-parent's 50th birthday last weekend, which was the occasion for interstate visitors to come and stay with us and a large birthday party.

It's as hard to imagine that co-p is 50 as it was for me to come to terms with that number for myself (I have got used to it, but it took over a year). Harder really, as she looks younger than me (no grey hair!)

In the back of my mind last weekend I was thinking about her 40th birthday, when we had a catered party in our home. I was six weeks pregnant, which means I'd officially become pregnant two weeks earlier and I hadn't felt very much yet in the way of symptoms yet. The day after the party, we went out to lunch with some of the same interstate visitors who were here this time and I felt a bit nauseous. In fact, I ended up having virtually no 'morning sickness' during the pregnancy, but on this occasion I felt something. I felt galvanised, electrified, as though I was on the edge of a precipice - the idea that I could actually be pregnant, eight years after I'd first tried to conceive, was literally unbelievable.

That feeling stays with me, which might be difficult for other women to understand. I don't know if it's because the period of my infertility was so long lasting - there was so much failure to conceive that it outweighs the one success. The infertility imprinted itself onto me, leaving a lasting scar, whereas I find it hard to remember what it was like to be pregnant - I only did that once and was in such a state of unreality and anxiety through most of it that it left hardly a trace in my physical memory.

So when I read accounts like this Israeli one ( a fictionalised account, but no doubt based on experience), I'm moved to tears - tears of sadness for what she (and I) went through and tears of relief that I got to pass through the curtain and land in the country of motherhood..

Comments

[Deborah]

We did the infertility thing, and now, three beautiful daughters later, I find that sometimes it still bites me. I find myself crying again, for all those years when our arms were empty. I have written about it, a little.

[Clare]

Yep me too - in fact both of us did the infertility thing. Thou my pregnancy stays with me I can remember the feeling of having Thomas inside me like it was yesterday (9 years ago now). I am sure it made Al's coming so much more stressful. But any story of infertility can still bring me to tears.