Getting Pregnant

I was so annoyed this weekend when yet another person told me the reason I couldn’t get pregnant was because I have two cats.

I was able to control my temper reasonably well but did explain to them that doctors agree the risky part about cats is first of all, to pregnant women (which obviously I’m not) and second of all, it’s related to their faeces and litter tray, and if you use gloves the risk is so small that you can’t write it anymore. On top of that, if you’re a woman who has grown up with cats, you usually already have immunity to the virus or whatever it is that could possibly cause a pregnant woman trouble.

Sorry to rant, but I’m so sick of people giving me well-intentioned advice without thinking it through. Anybody should be able to see that the two adorable cats I have are functioning as replacement children at the moment and they’re pretty important to my mental state, so giving them up is not a sensible move. Hopefully this (third) person will be the last to give me this suggestion - the fourth might not be so lucky as to escape intact, if I’m having a bad day!

I’d already gone online to check approximately when I ovulated each cycle, and since my period was regular - varying by just a day or two each cycle - I knew that around 14 days before the date my period was due, I was probably ovulating. We made sure that we did the deed more often around this time, but we were getting intimate regularly throughout the month so we were certainly maximising our chance of conceiving anyway.

But after six months, I thought I’d get a bit more scientific, and after getting advice from someone who’s wife had had trouble conceiving (finally, someone else!) I bought an ovulation test kit from the supermarket and began peeing on sticks.

Actually, the first kind of kit I used involved peeing in a cup and dipping a stick inside. One pink line for the control, and another line that got darker as I was closer to ovulation - and when it was darker than the control line, then according to the instructions, I would ovulate within the next 24-36 hours. It was easy to use and only involved testing myself for about 5 days a month, starting from about the 9th day of my cycle and continuing until it detected ovulation.

The good news was that it looked like I was ovulating at around the right time, and we’d been “doing it right” all along. This was better than finding out that I didn’t ovulate, but not especially helpful. So we just continued on as we were …

On my first date with my husband, he tricked me. And it was all about babies.

See, he’d liked me for a long time. I knew him, but as part of a big group, and he seemed like a nice guy but kind of quiet. I’d never had a private conversation with him. He’d been busily having private conversations about me with other people. Storing up information like a detective, he soon knew all the right buttons to push.

When we finally got onto our first date – it took a few months – he suddenly blossomed into this talkative guy, away from the crowds of the group. And then, subtly, in the middle of an ordinary conversation, he dropped the topic of having children into the room, and I fell for him.

He knew I was ready to settle down and have kids. And he was too, it wasn’t a lie. It’s just not usually something you’d mention on a first date – unless you knew the other person felt the same. Of course, I didn’t know he’d been finding this stuff out behind the scenes until much later. So his strategy was very effective and eight months later, we were married.

A few months later than that, I guess about a year after we’d first really got together, we decided I would stop taking the pill and we’d try to get pregnant. I was 30 years old at the time. We had a couple of friends who’d recently had children, but not a lot of knowledge about conception. We both had the idea that after coming off the pill – I’d been taking it pretty much non-stop for 12 years by then – it might take a few months for by body to return to normal. A lot of doctors absolutely disagree with this, but we didn’t know that at the time, so we weren’t expecting to fall pregnant immediately.

Knowing I wasn’t on the pill anymore made our sex life quite exciting. At any second, it could be the magical moment when we’d be starting our future family. And although my period kept arriving, reasonably regularly, for the first three or four months, we weren’t put off. We knew that sooner or later we’d end up with a positive test and a screaming baby.

Back when I was a teenager, teachers, parents and teen magazines were all warning us of the “dangers” of getting pregnant. They made it sound like the second that guy’s private parts swung vaguely in our direction, we were at risk of ending up as teen mothers. So I dutifully took the pill, and used a condom if there was any reason to doubt that the pill would be effective. I was almost terrified that a tiny mistake could end up with me being pregnant at an age when I didn’t even think I wanted to have children. Ever.

All that’s very ironic now that I’m thirty-something and trying to get pregnant. You see, it turns out that it’s actually not so easy. Well, at least not for everyone. And these difficulties are exactly what I’ll be writing about here at gettingpregnant.today.com . Join me for this bumpy ride and don’t be afraid to comment if you’re in the same boat.