Pregnant at 39

Sitting in a bird hide nursing my back pain while Phil is taking photos of dragonflies. I'm looking at the horizon thinking it's not dissimilar to the landscape I'm crossing at the moment. At the moment I'm in the middle of the first bit of water. I've traversed the bit of land before it and an very much in up to my neck. If my period doesn't start in the next couple of days and the discharge dissappears then I'll put of the water but onto the rough land ahead of that... There'll be breathing space until I'm thrashing through the reeds at the other end hoping against hope to get to the next stretch of water representing life beyond 12 weeks. Then I'll be paddling through 2nd and 3rd trimester, hard work but the view will be so much better and I'll be heading for solid land where I can look back and feel like it's some kind of miracle that I made it and there is a baby in my arms. It's hard to believe that people make and h...

I genuinely thought that getting the positive test result was all I needed to relax and enjoy being pregnant. I couldn't have been more wrong. Today is the day that I would have started my period according the the premom app I have been using and the presence of now brown discharge is giving me the hibigeebees. I'm still convinced that my period is going to start any minute, my back is killing me and every time I relax my nervous system, I have to go to the toilet which triggers it off again. Googling helps to a degree - pink/brown discharge can definitely be implantation... It should theoretically have been a little earlier, but my body has never played by any period cycle rules so I would have been surprised if my period had started today on a normal cycle to be honest. But it is also often what happens before my period starts. I'm starting to feel resigned to the fact that this could be a chemical pregnancy and any minute the flood gates will open and it'll all whoos...

After a couple of days of extreme excitement and smiling whenever I had a cramp, I had a busy day seeing 4 clients in the morning (not something I'd have planned if I'd known I'd be pregnant) then dropping a library book at uni, back to spurriergate to collect forgotten sunglasses, home by 3pm with banging headache, teaching from 3.30-5pm and then trying to pack to go to Norfolk. By the time I went to bed I had cramping all night and a light pink hue to my discharge and convinced myself I was having a chemical pregnancy and that my period would start any day. I barely slept, did another test in the morning which had a much darker line than Tuesdays (a good sign I feel) but that did little to reassure me because really there is nothing to be done to reassure. Every time I went to the toilet I expected my insides to fall out of me and for the whole thing to be over. I wish I hadn't pulled my back lifting a filing cabinet as the back pain mixed with the cramping is confusi...

  This post could also have been called 'wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles' - the song that is currently in my head. My life has always been an unexpected journey of twists and turns, joys and frustrations and this year probably more than every other... Job loss, pandemic, getting coronavirus, death (not mine!), falling off bike, excruciating nerve pain, moving house, getting engaged, becoming pregnant!! The miracle is that this is the first time we've tried properly... I got some ovulation tests, we had sex at exactly the right time... And two weeks later the tests show positive. In fact less than two weeks later - I did an early test the first day it was possible to get a positive... At 4.30am because I had a full bladder and couldn't get back to sleep. Phil joined me, and there was nothing to begin with so I was about to go back to sleep just as a very feint line appeared... However on inspection we decided it was too feint and that we should go back to sleep. I ...