Note to self: Stop reading parenting blogs (that aren't this one, obvs.)

What is it about parenting that makes everyone go all Judgey McJudge?

Well, not everyone, but more specifically, me.

No, in fact, everyone.  Everyone does this.

OK I admit I was quite judgemental beforehand, in a "well that outfit isn't very suitable for work now, is it?" kind of way, but with motherhood this tendency seems to have gone stratospheric.  

Take our weekly swimming class for example; it's a veritable showcase of all the things I can get judgey about: four year olds with dummies, baby girls clad in head to toe pink outfits, babies wearing jewellery.  The list is endless.  And on Wednesday at Baby Club I almost had to slap myself when I started getting all judgey over a three week old guzzling a huge bottle of formula.  For all I know, it might not have even been formula.  It could have been condensed milk for all I knew, but the point is why should I care?  It's blatantly NONE OF MY BUSINESS.  I think I am turning into this woman.

http://www.thealphaparent.com/

Yes I am getting a bit obsessed with this blog.  I think it appeals to my judgemental side.  I quite liked it while it was banging on about things that I already do and Why They Are The Best Way of Doing Things and Everyone Else Is Wrong, e.g. breastfeeding, co-sleeping and hating on all baby books ever written, but my new found love (and smugness) quickly turned to disappointment when a post appeared which detailed why "married parents are the best parents."

Clearly I am not, after all, doing everything right.  

Or maybe I should just take the words of someone who calls themselves "The Alpha Parent" and illustrates their blog with a picture of a mother with a halo, Virgin Mary style, apparently with no trace of irony, with a pinch of salt.  What's that halo about anyway?  If anyone is like the Virgin Mary, clearly it's me.  I bet the Alpha Parent didn't have an immaculate conception.  Perhaps I should write a post about why parents who have immaculate conceptions are the best parents, as clearly all this judgemental motherhood is just all of us desperately trying to justify our own personal life choices, whether they be marriage, breast/formula feeding, babywearing, baby led weaning or being Gina Ford. Or maybe we should just all accept that there are a million and one acceptable ways of doing things, and we should all just be nice to each other.  What a revolutionary idea.  At least that way the Daily Mail would definitely go out of business.

Horrible Itchy Disease

Woman in the last days of pregnancy is not a pretty sight.

I, for example, have just thrown up the sole thing I have eaten today-a fried egg sandwich-and after three hours sleep it's all I can do to move off the sofa in order to search the cupboards for stray crisps.  That is, if I can allow myself to eat anything at all, as I have also convinced myself that I have a terrible liver condition which is slowly poisoning the baby.

It all started last night.  I had been itchy, on and off, for quite a while, but last night's itching was on a whole new level.  My mother had kindly given up her bed and allowed me to sleep in her double while she suffered in the single bed which for reasons of storage has two mattresses and lives in "my" teenage bedroom, but it was all to no avail.  I tossed and turned, scratching away and peering at the internet on my phone in the darkness.  Unfortunately, Dr Internet's diagnosis was that I had something called obstetric cholestasis, and that my baby was going to die.  There was even an accompanying article from the Daily Mail about someone this had Really Happened To, to prove the point.  It took until 3.30am for me to finally get to sleep, only to awake at 6.30, just in time for me to confess my fears to Mother before she went to work.  Mother has now taken to addressing frequent stern grandmotherly rebukes to the baby within, urging him that it is "time to come out now and meet your grandmother."  I'm starting to think that's why he's staying in.  It was all I could do to point, sobbing, to the relevant section in What to Expect When You're Expecting and wail, "Mum, I have this.  And the baby is GOING TO DIE."

And what if the baby did die?  What would I do?  How would the news be shared on Facebook?  How would I go back to work and face all the puzzled teenagers wondering what I was doing there?  How would I put myself through it all again?  And some people actually have to do that.  It's too hideous to contemplate.

Anyway, I have spoken to the midwife this morning and they are going to do some tests today to establish if I do have This Horrible Itchy Disease.  Hopefully the results will be quick.  And at least the baby won't be premature.  Which is pretty much all I have to comfort myself with at this point, given that EVERYONE in my antenatal class (even the ones who weren't due until mid-August) has managed to miraculously pop out their babies already, leaving me as the bottom of the class loser who's a bit slow and holding everyone else up.  All I have to feel smug about is that hopefully, if my baby is born alive as planned, he will be so advanced that he'll probably walk straight out of the womb and off to university, and I'll never have to worry about getting the hang of breastfeeding, weaning or toilet training as he'll pretty much already be a fully formed adult.

I wish the Internet had never been invented.

Too many choices....

Now I appreciate that this sounds like an odd thing to say, and also as if I m moaning (again) but sitting on this sofa really isn't the pleasant and comfortable experience that DFS intended it to be.

This of course is not the fault of the sofa, which is, under normal circumstances, very comfortable indeed, and entirely the fault of the beachball-like appendage attached to my midriff.  I am told that birthing balls are good in these circumstances, but I am not sure they are good for balancing a laptop or, for that matter, my dinner.  Also, what does one do with a birthing ball after one has given birth?  It hardly seems worth the time, expense or sacrifice of harmonious interior design.

Anyway, the baby's head is now engaged.  At least, this is what I was told by the midwife today.  She also thinks he may have turned around and be facing the right way.  HALLELUJAH.  Hopefully this means I will not have to endure "back labour" and be screaming for an epidural before I've managed to breathe through the first contraction.  Although that said, someone at work was singing the praises of epidurals today and saying she couldn't believe she had endured her first two labours with only gas and air and wished she's realised the benefits of painlessness sooner.  I am so confused.  I thought epidurals were all wrong and a way of evil male doctors reinforcing the patriarchy by making women lie down and endure being ripped apart with forceps and scalpels.  I mean, that's what my hypnobirthing books say.  I am so confused.  My hypnobirthing books also say women in Africa give birth by finding a suitably secluded tree, then crouching down and breathing the baby out painlessly, which contrasts hugely with what I've read in the Guardian, which says women in Africa are all suffering needlessly long labours which last for weeks on end and culminate in obstetric fistula.  In whom is a confused mother-to-be to place her trust?  The Guardian probably has a better claim to authenticity, given that it has previously been right about a number of things, such as that Jeremy Clarkson is a knob and that nobody looks good in dungarees, but then I did see a recipe for saag paneer in there today that didn't include tomatoes and I like tomatoes in my saag paneer, so perhaps I cannot live my life blindly following the Rules of Being a Liberal Feminist set by the Guardian.  Also I remain conflicted by an article I read in there a while ago which suggested that same-sex marriage should be opposed by all right-thinking liberals as marriage as a concept reinforces the patriarchal idea that women are the chattels of their husbands and therefore no one-gay or straight-should get married.

The latter is a convenient view for a washed up spinster such as myself to pretend to have, though.

Although the Gaurdian also says I am not a washed up spinster, and that no woman should feel defined by their marital status or how good the Daily Mail says they look in a bikini, which is an even more convenient view to have.

GOD I AM SO CONFLICTED ABOUT LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING.  How am I going to write a birth plan expressing my "choices" when there is no consensus about what the right choice is, ever, about anything?

Introducing the world's first Gu Chocolate Pot Baby

Well, the insemination process is complete.

And if I get pregnant, I will be writing to the Daily Mail and proclaiming it a "miracle baby."

I'm sure the Daily Mail has lots to say about people importing sperm from abroad off the internet and using it to self-impregnate.  Hell, they could even illustrate their disgust with a picture of me showing off my "bikini body" on holiday in their sidebar of shame if they wanted to.

Not that I'm going on holiday this year as cannot afford it after buying sperm off internet.

Anyway, the insemination was a bit of a disaster.

I say "a bit" because it was actually 50% a disaster.  I had ordered two straws of semen (I didn't see why you couldn't just order one, but I figured that as I was paying so much for the shipping anyway I may as well go the whole hog) and miraculously managed to get them both out of the nitrogen tank without causing injury to myself or, more importantly, the sperms.  Not that I could really be one hundred per cent sure of the latter as obviously they are microscopic.  And reader, it was EXACTLY how it looks on TV, you know when they get the semen out of the tank in the lab with a big ladle, and all the nitrogen-steam escapes.  AMAZE.  I felt like I was in a laboratory when in fact was in own bedroom.

Anyway, I then thawed all the little sperms out of their slumber and prepared the syringe.  Except that I didn't have a test tube handy (who has a TEST TUBE in their house?) to pour the sperm into, and the entire contents of the first straw ended up on the floor.  Disaster.

Fortunately, I managed to rescue the second straw by using an old "Gu" chocolate pot in lieu of a test tube, to empty the sperm into.  Forget "test tube babies," the "Gu Chocolate Pot Baby" will be a world first.  Maybe I could even get Gu to sponsor the baby's upbringing.  This is assuming that there will be a baby, however, and frankly that is looking unlikely since the content of one straw added up to no less than 0.5mls of semen.

I know they say it only takes one but that is ridiculous.  I have basically just done the turkey baster equivalent of have sex once with a man with a ludicrously low sperm count who hasn't even properly ejaculated.  No amount of lying on the bed with my lower body propped up on a cushion is going to rectify that.

Anyway, now all there is to do is send the nitrogen tank back to Denmark, forget about the whole sorry exercise and pray that all my egg sharing tests are clear so I can have IVF.  I imagine that will be a whole lot less stressful than this exercise has been.  I mean, IVF isn't stressful at all, right?

"Yes, I am familiar with Epipens."

And so it begins.

Everything got off to a good start, i.e. despite everything seeming so easy in the clinic with the nurse explaining to me how to use the Gonal F pen and how she made it all look so simple, just like taking a lid off a felt tip pen and writing with it, and then I get home and promptly stab myself in the finger with it (a painless, but surprisingly bloody affair).

A bit like my first scan today (ewww TMI).

And thank God I've never been in close proximity to an Epipen emergency.  It would be a disaster for all concerned.  "Hang on, let me just check Youtube for a video of someone doing this!  I know you're lying on the floor with a swollen windpipe, unable to breathe and gasping for air, and your face has swelled up to the size of a beachball, but it'll be fine!  Just five more minutes!  Oops, you appear to have died."

I still can't believe I'm doing this.  Felt very brave today, injecting myself (well, once I had managed to get it into the right spot).  Sort of like a diabetic or other variety of ill person for whom every day must be a struggle, and who must literally be covered in holes from all the injections.

Anyway, have spent millions of pounds on it now so it had better work.  Although on the plus side, if it doesn't, at least I won't be having a baby with a man who may well be a total minger.

Oh God, banish terrible thought from head.  What if the baby grows up and reads this, and realises it has a terrible, cruel mother, who only cares for her child's physical attributes and once said to a colleague that she hoped her baby didn't turn out to be autistic.

OH GOD WHAT IF THE BABY IS AUTISTIC?  AFTER ALL ITS MOTHER CAN'T EVEN USE AN EPIPEN!!!!!  Is it called an Epipen?  I don't even know.  What else is one to call it?  Gonal F pen?  Anyway, I told the nurse I was "familiar with Epipens"  in a sage and knowledgeable manner today when she brandished the pen and asked me if I had seen its like before.  As in, we had a five minute training slot on it at work back in 2008.  So there you are, I am familiar with Epipens. 

Anyway, I'm off to stalk the many anxious and often hysterical chatrooms on the interwebs dedicated to women having fertility treatment.  Women like me.  I bloody knew this would happen.  I knew it in 1995 when I did that GCSE coursework on it.  I should have just cut my losses and had a baby then.  Then I would never be in this position.  I mean, what have I even done between 1995 and now anyway?  Only GCSEs, A levels and university.  Other than that it's just been a load of drunken carousing really.  Should have given up my youth to tend to the youth of tomorrow, like any good Daily Mail reader would do.  Bloody career is a quintessence of dust anyway.

Oh God now I'm really depressed.

AND the leaflet inside the aspirin pack of the aspirin I have been ordered to take (apparently it helps to prevent heart attacks in people with angina, though I'm not sure that that's the reason I am supposed to be taking it) says it may impair fertility.  The nurse assures me that this is not the case, and that they always prescribe it, but I have been obsessed with reading those little leaflets inside packets of tablets and sanitary products and assuring myself of their devastating accuracy ever since I read an article in Just Seventeen about somebody who had ACTUALLY CAUGHT toxic shock syndrome from a tampon.  You know, it could happen.

Let's hope not though, as I'm on my period at the moment and would hate to think that there could be a deadly reaction when one mixes the dangerous triumvirate of Gonal F, aspirin and tampons.

What with those and the folic acid, I am going to be literally rattling this month.  And to think that last time I got pregnant all it took was a couple of buckets of wine.

OK so I lost the baby.  Doesn't count.  Must have been because I wasn't taking a weird concocotion of medications.

Right, I really am off now.  I am starting to bang on about nuffin'.

Physical Illnesses: 0 (v.g.): Mental illnesses: Innumerable

Well I picked up my test results from the GP today and it appears that I do not have any of the following:

HIV
Chlamydia
Hepatitis B
Hepatitis C

Result.

I felt so smug at the fact that I am officially STD-free that I actually toyed with the idea of taking a vow of chastity to preserve this state of purity forever.

Given how phenomenally crap my love life has been recently though that probably won't be necessary.

I celebrated this news with a regular Monday night's festivities: gym, Miranda (rather below-par episode today, I felt) and several hours of pointless and frankly depressing purusal on the interwebs (today's search criteria: "having second thoughts about fertility treatment," as I have been spending much of the day thinking I might be mental to be throwing huge amounts of cash that I do not have on something which is probably not going to yield much of a return).

All that I learned was that a lot of people have fertility treatment and it fails, then they get really depressed and start crying all the time, then they get even more depressed and their marriages break up and they fall into an ever-deeper spiral of depression.  Then they get a bit better.  This last bit was necessary so that they could manage to write an article about it, usually in the Daily Mail, that ever-present harbinger of doom harping on about of the transient nature of a woman's fertility and the fact that it doesn't matter anyway, no one can have it all and if we prioritise our careers or are just not lucky enough to meet the man of our dreams "in time" then we are harsh-faced and unsexed old hags, and if we do get married and have children then we are doomed to a life of domestic drudgery.  And don't get them started on single mothers, who are basically responsible for last year's riots, the recession and the war in Syria.

All this means, of course, is that some of these unfortunates don't get better, and don't go on to write depressing articles in the Daily Mail.  They just jump off a bridge.

That said, I still thought the "shocking statistic" quoted in the aforementioned rag of 90 out of 900 women having fertility treatment feeling "depressed" was surprisingly upbeat.  That means the other 90% must be happy as sandboys, presumably.

Unless it was a typo and they missed off the percentage sign.  I mean, I feel pretty depressed and I've not even started.  I even started watching Superscrimpers (sample suggestion: use a dishwasher tab to clean your garden furniture.  Instead of what?  Instead of BUYING NEW FURNITURE?)

I'm fairly sure that "have fertility treatment" was not on Superscrimper's recommended list of tips.  But then, presumably, neither is "have a baby," which of course makes me feel so much better.

What am I doing?  I am mental.