Reviving the dead

Gosh its been a long time. No excuses really - 3 hectic weeks in Canada /the US followed by a grim 4 months at work , then Christmas, then a new job and too many blogs on my Reader that I feel compelled to read first before writing anything myself. Comments have been the only thing I have done for months.

And truth be told for quite a lot of the last few months I have been miserable. That low level pernicious not quite proper depression which is the result of two kids, two parents with jobs, too little sleep and generally feeling sorry for oneself and one's lot. Not a happy bunny even though on paper the two gorgeous kids, one lovely husband, nice house, good job etc are all exactly as I would have ordered. For reasons which are unclear I have been feeling better since the weather got better so perhaps it was all just seasonal affective disorder combined with pre-menstrual quasi-psychosis? Anyway I have been miserable and vile. My kids think I am shouty - sadly they are not wrong. My fuse has been infinitesimally short. Disputes over clothes for school - oh how I wish her school did not think uniform stifled the little darlings' creativity - turning in to shouting matches between a 41 yr old and a 5 yr old with the 41 yr old being quite frankly the least mature of the two. Whilst it is charming in a way to see how some personality traits work their way down to the next generation perhaps stubborn and argumentative were not the greatest things to have picked up from me.

Anyhoo - I have lots of stuff on the miserable months that I would quite like to get out in writing but I have something rather more pressing on my mind at present. Much to my surprise we managed to get me pregnant again without the services of our clinic or indeed any other medical professional. Unfortunately for me given my advancing years (there are only a few days before I am 42) and my track record of 4 pregnancies but only 2 live births the chances of this progressing inexorably towards the end of November and the arrival of a further child are very slim. I am 4w 5d now. I have booked a viability scan for 7w 1d and am assuming that either I won't need it or it will tell me that my week away at Easter will be grim. I have a great track record for miscarriages on holidays - May Bank holiday and a week in Sicily for m/c no 1 and Christmas at my parents for m/c no 2. I know that I should be indulging in positive thinking but I am now in a knicker checking, boob pressing frenzy and will be until this is proved as a keeper or not.

This turn of events, which was met by choruses of "oh fuck, what have we done?" from both of us and long silences from himself, is not what we had planned. After "did it by ourselves" pregnancy no 1 in 2007 and its demise I had finally got round to a point of acceptance that it was not going to happen again (because come on we had approx 10 years of unprotected sex and nada) and we were going to be a family of 4. It had taken a good long time. I also had a mental line in the sand of conception pre 42 and after that no more, definitively too old. Oh how the fates laughed - this pregnancy has as you will see snuck under my mental wire by a week. Bastard fates. Now I assume they will play with me for a few weeks and then laugh in my face. OK that really is being too gloom and doom but maybe it will cocoon me from the grief that will follow if this does go tits up.

Now - that wasn't too difficult. Not sure what was keeping me from posting before. Thanks must go to Hairy Farmer Family whose email prompted me into updating (although I haven't quite mastered links or photos).