Now that I’m at the point where, despite what I thought was clever dressing to conceal my bump, I am very obviously, it appears, pregnant, I am confronted by yet another issue. How much do I say about our baby’s origins?
Continue readingTag Archives: children
What happens next…
It’s hard to know what this blog – which has been all about trying to get pregnant – should be about now I’m actually pregnant. And I suppose that sentence alone is something that speaks volumes. I didn’t start this as a blog about trying to get pregnant. When I started it, it was a blog about freezing my eggs. And when, later, I came back to it, I thought it was going to be a blog about being a solo mother. But life has other plans. And so I suppose now it’s a blog about being pregnant with a donor egg after trying to get pregnant for so long.
Continue readingThe little things that trip you up…
When you read about people doing IVF (and let’s be honest, you do, don’t you? Because you’re here, and I know I’m awesome and all that but I’m guessing this isn’t the ONLY IVF blog you’re reading) or see women having IVF depicted in the media — in books, films or TV programmes, there are these classic tropes aren’t there?
You know what I mean. The woman who grits her teeth when a friend announces a pregnancy. Or wells with tears when Continue reading
Cognitive dissonance…
I was recently talking to a friend of mine, who had been going through IVF, about her experiences, and she was talking about the cognitive dissonance that seems inherent in all this.
You might never have done IVF, and you might not call it cognitive dissonance, but if you’ve ever been a teenager, you’ll know what she’s on about.
Maybe it was just me (I assumed it was everyone) who, as a teenager, Continue reading
PS Brilliant women writing
You might recall that in posts past I’ve bitched about the lack of publicity given to women who don’t have children given that there are meant to be so bloody many of us. Well clearly it’s like buses – you wait ages then blah, blah, blah (god that’s a shit cliché, after all, everyone’s got an app on their phone that tells them when the bus is coming now so you don’t ACTUALLY wait ages…) I DIGRESS.
Two brilliant pieces in the national press Continue reading
It’s been a while…
Bloody months actually – I’m sorry. I never promised regular updates but even by my own — pretty low — standards, it’s been an abysmally long time since I last posted.
I’d love to tell you that there’s a good reason for that; that I’ve been swept up in some torrid love affair (although, given that I just checked the spelling of “torrid” and found that synonyms include “hot, sweltering, sultry, scorching, boiling, parching, sizzling, roasting, blazing, burning, blistering, tropical, stifling, suffocating, oppressive; dry, arid, barren, parched, waterless, desert”, I’m not sure I’d really want a love affair like that) or that I’d made some momentous decision Continue reading
Where are all the childless women?
Just a quick one BUT… over the past few weeks I’ve been seeing a lot in the papers that references the fact that for women of my generation, having children isn’t necessarily a given – and far more so than in any previous generation. In a piece in The Times (talking about politicians and parenting – it’s very good, do read it), Janice Turner said:
Liz Kendall is no outlier. Of women like her, born in the 1970s, one in four will not have children.
That’s me. A woman. Born in the 1970s. One in four of us won’t have children.
And in another piece, this time in the New Statesman, Continue reading
Perspective – and weather
Perspective – like hindsight – is a wonderful thing. I’m frequently lacking in it. But then I rather think that we all are. It’s just very easy to get so wrapped up in our own worlds and our own worries, and our own mini dramas that we can’t see anything but that. And I am abso-fucking-lutely not recommending a hierarchy of misery where you make yourself feel like shit because not only have you been dumped or not managed to get pregnant, but you feel like you shouldn’t Continue reading
Mothers vs Non-mothers
It’s Easter, so given my penchant for puns, I should probably post something eggciting. But since I have pretty low levels of egg chat at the moment — ummm, they’re still frozen… — I thought maybe I’d write about motherhood and a few things that have caught my eye recently.
Firstly, we’ve all got the Facebook friends who sort of ended up there a bit by accident — The New Yorker was quite funny on this recently — actually maybe that’s a little unfair (as much as anything because a) I refuse to accept friend requests from people who were bitches Continue reading
Just do it (or don’t)
When I wrote about not being sure if I even wanted kids (which I totally accept seems a totally out of context post for a blog devoted to freezing eggs, although as egg freezing is about choice, I could probably argue that it’s fine to choose not to do something rather than to do something) I did start to wonder if I’d just spent too long thinking about the whole thing.
Which is ironic. Because when I was in a relationship Continue reading
Egged On 