Shall We Start At The Beginning?

My dear friend Janny P suggested a few weeks ago that I should start blogging again.  I think secretly it's because she's like all my friends, a nosy cow (!!) but I think she has a point.  This is a pretty weird and wonderful time for me, so it would be good to get everything down from my head and onto 'paper'.  So, here goes nothing...

Anyone who knows me, what's the one thing I said I would NEVER do?
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'Once upon a time there was a lady called Eleanor who lay awake on a very cold January night.  She had been poorly for at least a week, growing hot and cold, tossing and turning from the persistent pain she suffered within her body.  As her unknowing partner snored lightly beside her, she began to feel a now familiar feeling creep across the bed and slowly slide under the soft duvet.  A fear, which had started off as a small seed of doubt, now grew so looming and dense in the dark of the early morning.  This fear wrung her insides to pulp and spread all through her flesh like a cancer.  "Cancer," she thought.  That's what it must be.'

I've written the above paragraph melodramatically for a reason.   1.  Because it was a good way to open this blog, and 2.  Because now I realise how bloody over-the-top and theatrical my mind must have been when I self diagnosed.

So on Tuesday 25th January I made the decision to find out what the hell was going on with my body.

I'd been sitting around feeling the old 'flu blues (I swear, I did have 'flu at first.  Or a really heavy cold.  Man 'flu?) but it changed into something I didn't understand.  I'm not very good at being ill, I mean, who is?  Normally I mentally gee myself up to feeling a lot better/stronger after 3 days because I get so friggin' bored of sitting around watching cack TV and not being able to go outside.  After a week of phoning in sick and establishing an unhealthy relationship with the Maury show (there's not much funnier than watching a teenage black girl with a ridiculous name go into histrionics when the 3 men she's brought to the show all turn out *not* to be the father of her equally-ridiculously named child), I was fed up, bored, even more tired and afraid.

Stu and I went to the Doctor's surgery.  I explain myself, she pokes me a bit, asks the usual questions then smiles and says, "I think you're pregnant."  I'm like "Oh hell no!"  inside my head.  Outside I probably pulled a face resembling a Muppet about to fart.  She sends me to buy pregnancy tests (bastards, the NHS, they don't even give them out for free anymore!) and says to come back straight away with the results.  We wander down to a chemist in the bloody cold, I buy a 2 pack (always need that second opinion) and get back to the surgery.  In the loo, I figure I might as well do both tests at the same time.  This apparently is not advised in the notes they supply with the kit so don't follow me if you're mistakenly using this blog post as some kind of 'How To' manual.  The double pink lines.  Bloody hell, never seen those before.

I shall never forget this bit.  I came back into the waiting room to talk to the receptionist so I could see the Doctor again.  Stu was sat right on the corner of the seats, and he looks up at me and says "Was it...?", and I just nodded like I'd suddenly become dumb.  He did have a half-smile on his face, as I recall.  We sit and wait to be called again for what seems like forever, his arm around me, both of us very still and quiet.  This is pretty much how we spent the rest of the day, going to the hospital, having the scan and seeing what was essentially a white dot with a heart beat on the screen, finding out I was 6 weeks, everything becoming very real and focused, seeing nurses and doctors, me giving samples, and in between we're clinging onto each other.  I'm not sure it was just one emotion.  Not for me anyway.

What to do?
Really?
Fear.
Relief.
What does he think?
Can we do this?
Can I do this?
Erm.... What?

I think we both looked so odd, not like a happy couple expecting good news.  Stu is not one of those people who registers inner turmoil on his face, he can be very laid back and thinking a lot.  So when the specialist was talking to us, there was a lot of talk about "making some decisions" and "not much time if you choice is to abort" and other such stuff.  We shuffled out of the hospital in the evening and went to be picked up by my brother.  My father hadn't helped matters by telling him there'd been some kind of massive emergency (old people).  Found Maccy D's on the way home and sat in the kitchen digesting all this information as well as my food.  Man, I was hungry.

We'd muttered a little to each other during the day about what we should do, but our general conclusion was we were going to have to talk about it a bit more.  No sooner had we finished eating, Stu called his mother, his older sister and his 2 best friends and told them.

"So," I thought, "I guess we're having this baby then?"