Unprotected

Things didn't go exactly as planned during that post pill/ pre 'trying' period. Getting used to stopping and fishing out a condom, when really we did want to get pregnant was a bit difficult to get our heads round.

My dear husband was also terrified that when he knew he was doing it for real, he would get performance anxiety - and with the whole condom thing it was going to be fairly obvious that we had indeed stopped stopping ourselves.

At the end of the day, we had our first shot a couple of days before we had planned to, when messing around, my husband decided he didn't really want to stop and pop on a johnny, and I decided I didn't really think one day here or there was going to make much difference to whatever tiny scrap of anti-malarial medication I had in my system. And in the event, because we hadn't sat down and said 'right, here we go, let's give it a whirl', I am pleased to report there was no difficulty in rising to the occasion or in following through.


Of course, that first time did not bear any fruit, and a few more enthusiastic attempts later, I had proof of that - my first period in about 18 months. I greeted it with mixed emotions - it was a good sign in that it meant I appeared to be going back to a normal cycle and should be able to get preggers without too much delay, but it also it clearly signified that I was not, as yet pregnant - hardly a big surprise.

Sitting at home wrapped in big woolly jumpers and chain-drinking tea while clutching my bloated and painful tummy, I reflected on the fact that I really had not missed peridods at all... the associated crippling aches, my tendency to get mild diarrhoea at that time of the month, or the fact that for the duration I feel a little bit like I'm wearing a nappy.

I also reflected that if my very first few attempts had proved successful, I would have been eight months pregnant at next year's Glastonbury Festival, which I had persuaded my husband to buy tickets for for the first time in several years because I would hopefully be a little bit pregnant by then. I think that eight months pregnant would really be too waddly for sleeping in a tent and trudging through mud, however much I love the festival.

Anyway, my period is over now for another month although I am still curled up on the sofa comforting myself, this time because I have a nasty cold.

I wonder if I will become one of those women anxiously checking for my period each month, devastated by the first sight of blood. I hope not. I am realistic about how long this might take, and am planning to favour the scattergun approach (do it as much as possible and hope for the best) rather than a military strategy complete with dates and charts.

But wish me luck none the less. I'm off for another cup of tea.

Getting started

I am one of life's planners, taking no end of pleasure in lots of lists and knowing exactly what's going to happen next. Naturally, I hope to take pregnancy and babies in the same way.

Ha!

The graceful slide from recreational to procreational sex was somewhat spoilt by the fact that I have been on the progesterone only pill for the last 18 months and that to go to Cambodia, I would have to go on a course of anti-malarials.

This posed several problems - it was not a good idea to be trying to get pregnant while on anti-malarials, or for a questionable amount of time afterwards (don't want a malaria baby,see), and also, on the mini-pill as they like to call it, I had no periods at all and two things might happen when I stopped -firstly, there was a good chance I would have a really long period (not fun while on holiday) and secondly, it might take several months for my cycle to get back to normal.

I took these questions to a nice young doctor and bombarded her with them. I must have been a nightmare patient, but I suspect it was only the beginning. Having packed me off with both a huge pile of condoms and enough pills to last me six months longer than I had any intention of taking them, it was down to me to decide what to do.

So after weighing up all my considerations and conflicting advice, a plan of action was decided on - I would carry on taking the pill during Cambodia to avoid inconvenient bleeding, then go off it once I left and use condoms for the next couple of weeks (the half-life we decided Malarone might potentially have) before ditching all birth control and urging nature to take its course.

Strange to think something I have been trying desperately to avoid my whole adult life is now exactly what I am trying to nab.

An introduction

See that sow, with the swollen mammaries and enormous litter of piglets? That's what I want to be. A mum.

I always have wanted that,one day, in some distant future. But having found the man I was destined to spend the rest of my life with at the tender age of 19, and embarked on no less than nine years of ever so responsible sex, children were going to come 'when we were ready', when I had finally decided that actually, yes, you can meet the man you plan to grow old with when you are still unsure what hair colour, cut of jeans or pizza topping you prefer, and once we had taken the tiny step of getting married.

I imposed a few limits on myself - I didn't want to be married until I was at least 25 and I didn't want to start a family until we had been married at least a year.

After a few months of marriage made the arrangement seem comfortable, permanent and right, I realised that I had done enough waiting. I hatched a plan and proposed it to my husband. I was not prepared to say goodbye to fun just yet. I would have one last sun-drenched, carefree, irresponsibly drunken Glastonbury, then, for our first anniversary we would go to Cambodia and spend two weeks doing the kind of backpacking the advent of children forbids.

Then, I would go off the pill and we would go from practising the art of babymaking enthusiastically but with no hope of success, as we had been doing for the best part of a decade, and get down to business the way my Catholic priest likes to think we had been doing it all along.

And that pretty much takes us to today...