Cut like a knife in The ugly truth about making babies

An ex colleague is 20 weeks pregnant. She posted on Facebook yesterday about feeling fat and how the body she worked so hard for is being ruined, and how she can’t wait to get back to the gym.

I’m not gonna lie, I was tempted to message her and say she doesn’t know how lucky she is. She lost a ton of weight for her wedding last year, then mere months after the wedding came the pregnancy announcement, like clockwork. It’s all been so plain sailing. She wanted a baby and now she’s having one.

Every day without a baby, the longing is more. The want is more real and the ache is bigger and harder to bear. Every time I step on the scales and the weight hasn’t dropped off it makes me want to cry. I know I’m doing it the right way, I’m swimming and running and healthy eating akin to a slimmers world type of diet. I know when you only have a little to lose it’s harder. I know all these things.

Joey says all the right things, he’s proud of me, I’m too hard on myself, it doesn’t matter if it takes 6 weeks or 6 months, we’ll get there in the end, we’ve already waited this long. And I know he’s right. But how do you reconcile that with the fact that you’ve been ready for this for a good five years, you’ve finally found the person you want to have a family with, and then there are so many obstacles in the way?

I was always the person who thought they’d have kids ‘one day’. Then almost overnight I became the person who stood in the supermarket crying at the babygros and wondering if I’d ever meet someone to have a baby with. 27 was not a good age for me. Most people have their mini crisis when they hit 30. Not me, mine hit with a vengeance at 27. I was barely qualified, living at home, single, and all the things I’d imagined would be in my future by that age seemed so unbelievably far away. 30 was actually a good year for me. Spent my birthday in Florida with my family, which was much needed after an horrendous break up the previous Christmas. Gave myself time to recover from that and met joey 6 months later.

He was the one who caught me off guard. The one who wasn’t meant to happen. I’d had a couple of terrible dates in the previous couple of months, sat across the dinner table from people who didn’t really do it for me and having to make the effort, keep up the pretence, was hard work. So when joey messaged, we spoke for a good while before we met up. We waited a week between him asking me out and actually neeting, owing to my work shifts, and when we did meet I suggested a casual drink in my local pub. Easy escape if I needed one!

We stayed til they chucked us out, then sat outside my house in his car talking for another hour or more despite the fact we both had work the next day. If I’m honest I’m not entirely sure I was meant to happen to him either. He still had loose ends to tie up from his divorce, the buying his ex out of the house, and he definitely wasn’t over it 100%. But here we are two years later. Sometimes i struggle to believe it actually happened, that we actually have managed to stay together, when I think of the things we’ve been through with his psycho ex and his drinking. Then it reassures me that we’re stronger than we realise and can get through this whole ivf process together, just like we have with everything else.

I don’t know if he knows how desperately I want this. I think a big part of me is scared to tell him. He already feels so guilty and that this is his fault. I know if it doesn’t work out, the ivf, he’ll tell me I should leave him. I know he’ll tell me that. I suppose I’m worried if it doesn’t work out he’ll push me away, thinking he’ll save me from making the choice myself. It’s never even been a consideration for me, walking away. If I was going to walk away I’d have done it at the beginning when he first told me about his sperm.

I watch dads with their kids more than I watch mothers with their kids. I want that for him just as badly as I want it for myself. Sometimes more I think, because I know that he’s been here before with his ex wife and she didn’t want to have ivf, so he lost not only the hope of a family but also the family he already had with her.

I’m just feeling incredibly maudlin today. It’s one of those days where it feels like it’s never going to happen. I think I’m just tired, in between two sets of night shifts, my body clock is all over the place, slept like crap last night. Woke up an hour after I’d gone to sleep, having dreamt that someone was robbing the house, couldn’t get back to sleep for ages, then woke up at 5am.

Maybe I need to learn to meditate.

Xx