Bumps To Baby Part Two

This week's Lounge topic is adult temper tantrums, so I am linking this old post about the time I slapped my own mother. I know. Shameful. I blame hormones. Ahem.

It seems like the years of trying to have a baby are now the Wilderness Years or the Forgotten Years. I'm trying hard to remember them and I seem to have blocked quite a bit of it out. Weird.

After receiving the devastating news that IVF was our only chance of a baby, we put off making a decision for a while.  I wasn't sure if I could face another Linda Blair/Exorcist experience.

I remember having some rather irrational thoughts.  I thought Micky Blue Eyes should leave me and find someone else.  After all, the problem was with my plumbing, not his. 

Then, a friend of Mick's suggested we visit a naturopath.  This had worked out well for them and they were currently expecting after having seen her for a few months.  I was horrified and indignant. How dare these people come along with their hippy drippy new age theories that were not going to work for me. The professor dude had said IVF was my only chance. However, Mick was keen on the idea, so, I reluctantly agreed.

Next thing you know we were both swallowing some hideous herbal concotions, taking vitamins and eating healthy.  I was charting my temperatures to predict ovulation.  All to no avail.  We trotted backwards and forwards to the naturopath and persisted for a good year. Nothing. 

At this point, she informed us.  "I'm sorry, it should have worked by now. You might have to do IVF."  Gee, thanks.

Proving how desperate we were by this stage, however, we decided to try another hippy drippy  alternative treatment. We went to a Reflexologist. And no, I can't explain what they are, or do, even though I've been to one. There seemed to be a lot of tapping involved. The woman tapped away while Mick I gave each other pointed looks. We never went back.

Around this time, I started to read as much info on this pesky PCOS thing as I could find.  The thing that seemed to come up a lot in all the literature was that exercising was of extreme importance in managing the condition.

So I gritted my teeth and started to exercise.  I kept on exercising, even though I thought I might explode and die from the effort.  I did aerobics like a possessed woman. I sweated buckets. It sucked. Still, I woke up the next day and did it again.  Then a funny thing happened.  I started to like it. I hardly ever missed a day. 

I had a body like Denise Austin. Well not really, but I
did used to have hair like that...

Then, an even funnier thing happened.  The girl who'd been absolutely hopeless at anything sporty or physical, and was a total unco-ordinated klutz suddenly found herself becoming *gasp* an Exercise Addict. I LOVED it.  I knew all the annoying things Denise Austin would say on the tapes before she said them, I was so familiar with them.

"If you rest you rust!"

"If you don't move it, you lose it!"

Oh, and apparently I was always 'doing great!' and a 'champion' though I'm not sure how she knew that.

Not surprisingly, with all this exercising and eating healthy stuff, I dropped a few kilos.  Funny about that. Eat less. Move more. Lose weight. Hmm, not exactly rocket science. I'll never understand  why mother nature or whomever couldn't work it out so lazing about eating cakies could have the same effect. Hmph.

I also went back to doing some casual library work and secured a 12 month position with a law firm in the city. If I was never going to have a baby, I may as well work, I reasoned.

My 30th birthday rolled around. I went out and celebrated with friends, where I whined about not being able to have a baby with other friends in a similar circumstance. Not a particularly classy thing to do, when you are already, in fact, well and truly, up the duff. But, I swear to God. I seriously had NO IDEA. 

A month or two later, still firmly in the grip of Exercise Addiction, I attended a friend's hen's night. I wondered why my clothes were becoming too tight. And why I felt extremely ill after only a few drinks.

Additionally, all the energy I was now used to having from my Exercise Addiction seemed to have deserted me and I found it a herculean task to simply put one foot in front of the other. My boobs were permanently sore and my periods had disappeared.

All common symptoms of PCOS according to all the info on it I'd been reading.  It couldn't be anything else.  I'd tried for years to become pregnant. Even fertility drugs didn't work and the professor dude said IVF was my only chance.

So, when my poor mother had the audicity to gently suggest that perhaps I might be pregnant, I turned into a shrieking, shouty, insane woman, who slapped her own mother in the face (sorry Mum)  and sunk onto the floor in a sobbing heap.

Upon hearing this, Micky Blue Eyes had had quite enough of my moodiness. I suspect I was rather unpleasant to live with really. (Sorry, Micky) He made me go with Mum to the doctor's the very next day.

At the doctors surgery, he had me lie on the bed and examined me. My belly suddenly looked ridiculously huge compared to the rest of me, when I lay down.

 "It looks like you're pregnant," he told me. It was like he was saying: "It looks like an alien has invaded your body and presently will burst out of your torso, like Sigourney Weaver in ALIEN" for all the sense it made to me. No way, I wasn't pregnant. "But  you better have an ultra sound to make sure."

A few hours later I went in for an ultra-sound. The examiner squirted the gel on my suddenly ridiculously huge belly and started prodding me and saying nonsensical things in her Asian accent. I thought it sounded something like 'oh yes, there's the head, and the arms..." What?! It really was an alien?!

  "I'm pregnant??!!" I finally managed to gasp. The woman looked completely startled. "Yes, yes! Pregnant, 26 weeks! You didn't know?"

All I could do was laugh and cry hysterically at the same time, while the Asian lady kept repeating "26 week! And didn't know! Ha ha ha ha!" I'd like to think she was laughing with me, but I suspect she wasn't. She also mentioned the baby was a boy without asking if I wanted to know, which was slightly inconsiderate.

Still laughing and crying, hysterically, I finally went out and told my ecstatic Mum she was becoming a Granny again in only a few months! Then, I rang Mick.

"Hello Dad," I said, when he answered.
"No, no it's Mick, " he said "you haven't rang  your father."
"I know!" I replied.

We all went out for dinner that night to celebrate. It felt better than winning lotto.  Well, I've never actually won lotto, so if that could be arranged so I can tell for sure, I probably wouldn't mind.

Lotus flower: pretty, but not helpful during Child birth

3 months or so later our son (now Master 11) was born, but I won't describe the birth. If I did, I would end up sounding like one of those awful hippy drippy new agers who just use the power of positive thinking while imagining their uterus opening up like a lotus flower. Ugh. Hate them. After all, epidurals were invented for a reason, right?

But I never had one. Or any pain relief, for that matter. Yep, that's right. I was TERRIFIED of child birth and I aced it. After a 3 month pregnancy. You can hate me if you want. Okay, I'm shutting up now.

Hang on. One more thing. Obviously I have 3 boys now. All conceived naturally. So, the Professor dude was wrong. That, or I just finally figured out what caused it...

Right, I'm off to dig out those Denise Austin tapes to see if I can become addicted to exercise again, instead of cakies.  After all, if  you rest you rust.

Linking up with The Lounge which is being hosted this week by Robomum.

What was your worst adult temper tantrum?