Alright! It's been a while. Since my last blog BrideBoggles I've been happily married for nearly ten months to Ben Lunt. I still have trouble calling him 'husband' because it seems ridiculously grown up. And he reckons wearing a wedding ring has made him [and I quote] 'Even more irresistible to the ladies' who apparently look him up and down with a sigh because he seems 'too young to be married' (he's nine years younger than me, something he's not got tired of reminding me even after eight years of being together).
Within two months of getting hitched I'd managed to become reacquainted with all the weight I lost for the wedding (yay, Nandos!) and despite the grand plans to get my wedding dress shortened and turned into a nice party outfit, its still hanging up in my dressmakers shop having only just been cleaned of the booze and fake tan from our wedding day. After our roadtrip honeymoon we settled into married life on the sofa bingeing on Orange is the New Black on Netflix and breathing a sigh of relief that we no longer needed to talk about flowers or bridesmaids dresses.
Then last New Year we went on holiday with some friends to Geneva where I experienced snowboarding for the first time. In a nutshell: I looked the part and had all the snazzy gear but had the coordination of a new born ox, got whiplash, hit over the head twice by a ski lift having slid off it and had to be dragged to safety by an attendant. Basically I made Bridget Jones look like an Olympic medal winner. 'Apres Ski' I could cope with however, and a booze fuelled romp on New years eve (much of which I can't remember apart from a blurry vision of Ben still wearing goggles on his head and a gold jacket he'd decided to dress up in while doing pissed Justin Bieber impressions) changed the course of the rest of our lives forever. A few weeks later I discovered I was up the duff with our first child.
So as we embark on our journey of not-knowing-what-the-hell-we're-going-to-be-like-as-parents, bickering about names - it's gotten so desperate, the other day I suggested we name it after the make of a hand dryer in Macdonalds - and preparing for a total topsy turvy upheaval, I thought maybe it was about time I shared it with you.
To start with I want to be brutally honest about our experience of trying for a baby. Like many women before me and maybe even reading this right now, it's not been as easy and 'after the wedding perfect' as it sounds. Over the last couple of years I've had two miscarriages - both what are termed 'silent' or 'missed' - which meant I didn't know until I had my first scans that the baby hadn't survived beyond about 7-8 weeks.
So it wasn't until a friend of mine, who'd previously suffered four miscarriages, told me about a doctor who had finally helped her have a healthy baby that we got lucky. After a visit to miscarriage specialist Dr Shehata and several bloodtests later I was told I had a thing called Natural Killer cells in my blood, which effectively meant that when I got pregnant my body thought the fetus was a foreign body and started attacking it (hence it didn't survive). Before Ben and I started trying for another after the wedding, I was put on a course of steroids, which Dr Shehata's team found can lower the natural killer cells. And once we discovered new year had brought in more than just a stinking hangover, I continued my treatment with him up until the 12 week stage, after which the meds were reduced. While it wasn't cheap, it was the best money I could have spent.
And here I am, six months in, the bump is doing its thing naturally and I'm starting to resemble a walking egg. I'm determined not to be 'one of those mums' who bangs on about boring baby shit all the time but there are some things I feel I need to discuss as the weeks go on - like how bloody hard it is to try and keep it a secret from your work colleagues and how many rubbish maternity clothes there are out there. So I hope you'll join me for the journey.
Oh my god I've just started googling breast pumps. What has happened to me?
P.s Ben has instructed me to add this bit of 'insight' from him: "When you're trying for a baby, ignore all that crap about having to do it like clockwork for 10 days on the trot. Your wife turns into a bossy robot saying 'it's time!' and it's not fun. You will get your missus pregnant when you have good proper sex that hasn't been planned. The end."