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Sunday 25 March 2007
the story so far

before i start, i want to thank EVERYONE for their warm wishes and thoughts. i knew that finally posting that photo would be FUN but i had no idea that so many people would enjoy it too ( i'll write a bit about that photo later in the post .. )

so here it begins. alot of my family and friends won't know this story, actually i could say all of our family and friends will be surprised to hear this from me. my story is not uncommon, but i think it's something that alot of people don't have insight into. i don't claim to 'know it all', but i know how i feel and i know how lucky i am to be on the 'other side'.

i think it's important for me to tell it like it is, from my point of view. to be honest and real, so that you understand where i'm coming from. i've always known that i'd be a mother one day, i didn't aspire to lead a perfect life but i knew i wanted to be a mum and i wanted to give my everything to someone, the way my parents did for my siblings and i.

(click here to continue reading, be warned it's a long one!)

when Regan and i were married just over 3 years ago, we agreed that it was too early to start trying. but as the years went on, secretly in the back of my mind, i wondered why it hadn't happened yet. anniversaries came and went, and my health would slip further down the track - panic attacks, fainting, migraines, stomach upsets, irregular periods, intolerable cramps and pains - all unexplained at the time. i figured i'd concentrate on just getting better, going gluten free, going on birth control, going off birth control, meditation, exercise, therapy, nautropathy - trying anything that would 'level' me out.

fast forward 12 months, going gluten free helped alot - there were no more panic attacks, unexplained blackouts, and more energy. i was off birth control (again) as it wasn't doing anything but causing my body more damage, in my honest and real opinion. (in total, i was only on bcp for about 6 months before it drove me crazy). i was 'clean' again, but started having some strange symptoms, which ranged from 2-3 weeks of constant nausea and cramps. my period was regularly irregular, at first it was every 31 days on the DOT, but then it would go from 31 to 28 to 26 to 31 again. it was worrying because i was basically incapable of living my life for 3 weeks out of the month. it was getting worse.

tests and appointments began, and i began looking at the options. i had endometriosis and i needed a laproscopy, was the first and most likely one. i started reading about endo, and asking questions about it all. did it mean i was infertile? would it mean i'd never have kids? would we need to try ivf if this doesn't work? we didn't know whether it would make me 'better' as endo is only diagnosed when you have the lap and then after that it's not a guarantee that you'll conceive, so we made the choice to wait a maximum of 5 months to see what happens naturally. we figure that we're still young, preferred natural therapies and still have 'plenty of time' but agreed that i shouldn't wait too long for things to get worse.

during this time, i just wasn't handling it well. i made a terrible fool of myself at a friends wedding, plastering on a fake smile but secretly dying on the inside. i did confide in a couple of close friends, which helped, but didn't make me feel better about the situation head.

a 3 year backlog of 'so when are you two having kids?' and 'how come no kids yet?' was eating away at me, what could i tell them? what could i say to them to make them understand? there was nothing really.

i remember being in the car, driving home one night, crying because i realised that it may never happen for us and that i'd have to be okay with that. being childless was just not going to be my life, but i couldn't turn into someone who was consumed by it.

so i guess from that point on, i just let it go. we'd make a decision on the laproscopy a little later on, and if we could we'd look at adopting instead. things would be okay. we would be okay, we always were.

6 weeks later, monday february 26 at 5pm, in secret, i took a test.

i was pregnant.

it didn't take long for it to show up, that little blue line. the line that made all the difference, and has turned our lives around. it was a total of 2 seconds before i realised why i had been feeling extra crap that day, and why i was at day 33 and my period hadn't arrived yet. (i figured that i was still suffering those strange symptoms, and hated the idea of a negative pregnancy test to kick you in the uterus when you're already down).

i cannot describe to you properly how i felt or what was going through my head, a combination of 2 years of exhaustion, relief, disbelief and hope. shock, confusion, absolute joy, a weight lifted off my shoulders. it's SUCH a cliche when you hear about stories like this, but it's all true when you're the one feeling it.

a few minutes past 5pm, and i'm leaning on the bathroom door for support, crying my eyes out because there was nothing else to do but. Mischa was silent, standing there and looking at me, unsure of what to do too. whenever i recall those first few minutes, i'll always remember that i probably scared my dog. i was the woman who found out she was pregnant and scared her dog with her hysterical crying.

and what else does a hysterical woman do? she takes a photo of course! not a photo of herself, but the first photo of evidence of the child that is now growing inside her, so that she has proof that it was actually real, and that it really could happen. and that she wasn't seeing things. i took the photo on total auto pilot, switched the camera and flash on, took the photo, make sure it was focused, turned the camera off. there was no time to reshoot, i was not sane enough to think of anything more creative or fun to do with it.

Regan arrived home from work about an hour later. i was still crying but had calmed down enough to ask him to sit on the couch and hand him the positive test. i had no idea how to 'tell' him so it was all i could do at the time. he smiled, he told me he already knew and that he saw a change in me over the past week and was apparently keeping his own tabs on how late my period was. i was relieved that the one person i trusted and loved the most in the world, knew me that well. he's my rock, and he was happy!

people are probably wondering why i've told you all about the pregnancy this soon, and this early on. i hope this blog entry makes that a little clearer, but if it isn't ...

i believe pregnancy is a gift, not all people will see it that way, but for me, for us it is.

not everyone has it easy, and it's not as 'pretty' and 'neat' as you see it on tv or as you might hear from family or friends.

wherever i am in this pregnancy, whatever happens from now on, i feel incredibly lucky to know the feeling of a positive pregnancy test, and to feel what i'm feeling right now. morning sickness be damned. i'll take all the nausea, vomiting, food aversions, pains, aches, heart palpitations, swollen feet, skin break outs, dehydration, constipation, diarrhea, odours, exhaustion and weight gain you want to throw at me. it's all worth it.

and it might just be the hormones talking here, but so many women go through worse than what i've experienced, and some will never experience what i have so far. i spent 18 months figuring this all out before we fell pregnant. 18 months is a drop in the bucket for some of those women. i don't pretend to understand their pain, but i can imagine the kind of life they might have because i was months away from that life too. those women are my heroes, and i consider them mothers already.

i post about all of this before the traditional safe 12 week mark because this is happening to me NOW, and whether i'm 8 weeks along or 38 weeks along, i'm proud and thrilled to be pregnant and i've never been happier.