Those of you who have been reading this blog over the last few months will know I’ve been undergoing fertility treatment. It’s been a long and arduous journey but recently I got to share some good news – finally. I’m pregnant. I still can’t believe I get to write those words, but it’s true. There’s one thing that I haven’t told you though. Quite how pregnant I am. In reality this journey has been going on even longer than you know. For the eagle eyed amongst you, you might have picked up on clues about when I was undergoing treatment. My very first negative pregnancy test was on mother’s day last year. I’m now just past halfway through this nine month ordeal journey.
Whilst I wrote each and every one of my blog posts chronicling this journey as it happened, I didn’t publish them till later. At times it felt strange, almost bad – was I lying to you all? Never. All the feelings and experiences in there were real. At points my recountering of one event coincided with another you were yet to know about; all the good luck comments for attempt number one, actually fell perfectly for attempt number six which was all kinds of awesome. There was a few reasons why I chose not to share the journey in real time.
When I started this process I was still struggling to really own my decision. The thought of letting others in on it was pretty terrifying. I was worried what the neighbours would think, I feared whether people would support me and I resented the words of caution and shock – since when do two parent families get questioned on if they could cope with two? I didn’t want to let people in on my ‘news’ when I was worried their opinions might (negatively) influence me. Then there was the fear that if a baby was ever to grow, shouting about it from the rooftops (or at least on social media) would somehow jinx it all. No doubt I would have told you all if I had lost a baby, but I wasn’t sure I could do that as it was happening. Having experienced baby loss before I know how painful it can be. Until this baby is safely in my arms there will always be a part of me that fears this daily.
In all honesty, I also (naively) thought it wouldn’t take me very long to get pregnant. In my mind I’d wait till I was pregnant to share the news of my decision and then catch you up with where I was. Yet in the end, months and months passed by. By this point I was beginning to own my decision a little more, so I started posting about this journey well before I was pregnant. The gaps between the experience and the sharing helped ensure I was able to cope with writing and sharing such personal and raw accounts of the process of fertility treatment as a solo mum, and hopefully they will help others going through similar.
Don’t worry, everything else is real time. I’m not actually a grandma writing about my life as a mother from the 1980s. I am very much still a pregnant, single mum of a four year old boy – I just happen to be a bit fatter than you might have been imagining. Although, saying that I still have a backlog of a few blog few posts about the first trimester that I need to update you all with! Watch this space.
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This post is part of my single mum by choice series. You can read all about it here:
- Thinking about becoming a single mum by choice
- Deciding to become a single mum by choice
- Choosing a Clinic
- Single mum by choice: The Process
- Fertility Treatment Implications Counselling
- Choosing a Sperm Donor
- Preparing for insemination
- Booking the IUI appointment
- IUI insemination day
- Solo Mum Waiting To Take a Pregnancy Test
- Still Waiting To Take The Pregnancy Test
- Trying Again: Donor Conception
- Planning Fertility Treatment: The Wobble
- Planning Your Second Round of Fertility Treatment
- Fertility Treatment the Second Go
- Fertility Treatment Failure: Third Time Unlucky
- Fertility Treatment Round Four – Is This The One?
- When Fertility Treatment Fails
- Solo Mum By Choice: Attempt Number Six