Baby-mania

I remember reading a feature written by a journalist where he was bemoaning the predicament he had found himself in at social gatherings since having a baby.
He would find that the host would inevitably say ‘Oh meet so-and-so, they’ve got a baby too’. He found himself wedged in the company of people he had nothing in common with – except that they were both fathers.

I think it starts even earlier than that.

Since I have ‘come out’ at work, I now find myself inundated with other people’s baby photo’s.

‘Oh you’re having a baby, I’ll have to send you the photo’s of my daughter’s Easter Parade(!)’

And she did – six photo’s emailed to me within 10 minutes. I gave them a polite cursory glance, then deleted them, then thought, what now? Do I have to rush over breathlessly and gush?

That’s the second time it happened in one day. The other time, I was handed photo’s to look at while the doting father looked on proudly.

Because I’m having a baby, am I now expected to become a certain ‘mumsie’ kind of person?

The seeming contradictory thing with me and my struggles with infertility are that though I’ve been absolutely driven in my goal to have a family, I’ve never been the desperate clucky type. Before my struggles, I never goo-gooed or ga-gaed around babies, and it would seem that gene hasn’t kicked in since.

I loathe all the predictable baby ravings.

I think its part of the reason I took so long to tell people at work – I wanted to hold back the wave of baby-mania for as long as possible.

I mean clearly I am not anti-baby – just all the bull**** that seems to come with it.

I realise it’s fruitless to fight against what now has become the norm – the total worshipping of babies/children – but do I have to subvert my entire identity to become a mother?

We all wonder how profoundly we have been affected by IF, and how we will differ from the regular fertile mothers, but in my case this isn’t a sign of any lingering bitter attitude towards the fertile, it’s just the way I’ve always been. I wonder if I’ll have to keep a lid on my natural cynicism in order to deflect any accusations of ‘oh she was infertile, that’s why she is the way she is’. Maybe all that play-acting at being normal along the way will have to continue way, way into the future?

I guess it’s just as well I became good at it.

We would most definitely seem to have hit vegetables – Week 18 – large sweet potato.
I’m not entirely sure, but I 'think' I may have started feeling the first signs of movement – last night - a weird fluttery, bubbly feeling – low down – just above my pubic bone. Then again toay. At first I thought it was the gross daily intrusion of gas, then I realised it was in the wrong spot. I’m chuckling to myself – I still don’t look pregnant and I can feel movement!