Allowing myself to believe: mistake number one

My period came yesterday. I was actually disappointed.

Somehow, despite entering into this in the most sensible of intentions, I had managed to allow a tiny, naughty thought get into my head. When my husband started telling me he reckoned I was pregnant already, I chided him and told him he was putting undue pressure on my ovaries/eggs/general lady garden.

But being a bit haphazard with the whole period thing, it being such a long time since I was in the habit, I had neglected to write down when I last had one. I worked out it might have been as long as five weeks. Now even though I know full well that when you come off the pill, your periods are not exactly regular, it did occur to me that it might be taking a little bit long.

Then I had a day last week when anything that could happen, did happen. I managed to knock over the same cup of tea twice. Then, while getting ready to cycle to work, I unlocked then accidentally relocked my bike no less than three times. Once I arrived at work, I accidentally threw my wallet in the bin while making a cup of tea. And later on, at home, I knocked over a mug and smashed it.

I am sometimes clumsy, but this seemed a little excessive. So I surreptitiously googled clumsiness in early pregnancy. I didn't find anything particularly definitive, but enough to plant a seed of excitement. Then I googled other early pregnancy signs, and found that yes, I was pretty tired, and my nipples had been a bit tender the other day. I allowed myself to get excited and contemplated actually buying a pregnancy test.

Then, my period came.

I suspect a lot of those pregnancy signs can also be signs that you are about to get a period. And lets be honest, in my case, I have been known to do some quite exceptionally dim things on the clumsy front. My colleagues are often in stitches when one of them decides to recount the tale of when I accidentally cycled into an iron bar. It was marked with red and white tape, so you would have thought it fairly visible. Or there's the time I sprained my ankle doing a particularly vigorous dance move at a festival. And only last week, I was practising a spin for my salsa class on my carpeted floor at home, which resulted in me dramatically crashing onto my husband's lap and nearly braining myself on the table. He was not best pleased.

On the plus side, this definitely justifies buying lots more stinky unpasteurised cheese. And maybe a few more prawns. Mmmmmmmmm.