Unpregnante

Still.

I can hardly believe it and I find it quite disturbing.

We've had 11 bites at the trying to conceive apple and we've had no luck. Not so much as hopeful lateness. Probably the most distressing part of this is that infertility has been a secret fear of mine since I was a small girl.

When I was 8 I used to stick a pillow under my clothes and pretend to be pregnant and I wondered what it would feel like to have a baby growing inside me ... at 9 I used to hold newborns and pretend they were mine ... at 10 I was known as the baby-girl, take me to a gathering and hand over your small babies. At 11 I used to sneak into the non-fiction section at the library to read the birth books - I thought I was so naughty to be investigating birth. At 12 I waited impatiently for menstruation to begin and my boobs to grow and I worried about the possibility of not being able to have babies. By 14 I had started menstruating but the boobs and hips hadn't arrived (they still haven't) and I worried that my body was too boy-ish to bear children easily. I began to babysit other people's kids and I loved it. Just call me the baby whisperer. Mothers with fussy babies watched in awe as their little darlings settled and slept in my arms while I swayed and cooed. (I can still do that now, though it never worked particularly well with the Little Guy, something that surprised me no end. Apparently I am only fantasmogorical with other peoples babies.)

Anyhoo, I wanted and wished for and worried about not having babies for years and years and when I fell pregnant with the little guy I hadn't "tried" at all. He was what people politely refer to as a surprise baby. I dithered about the having of him as his father and I had a tumultuous, and ultimately unsuccessful, relationship but decided to go ahead. Entre the Little Guy.

So then I find the Big Guy. A man I really want to have children with. I want to have his baby almost desperately, I want to grow a part of him inside me and see what this little person who is a mix of us is like. But I'm 36 and I've not lived a terribly healthy life and my eggs are showing their age.

And my childhood and teenage anxieties seem to be coming true. Almost a year of trying and no pregnancy. If we'd managed to get pregnant the first month, our baby would be about to be born. But alas, we're off to the fertility specialist instead.

Crap.