I would love to say that this is an exciting Lord of the Rings style adventure (sadly not), but it is my mission and I choose to accept it!

“Everyone I know is either pregnant or having beautiful babies!” False. It does feel like all of my friends are either pregnant or having babies at the moment, but that is just the stage of life we are at.  The truth is: I really want a baby, so that is all I can focus on! It’s like when you’re a teenager who has just broken up with their boyfriend: everybody seems to be coupled up and snogging each other’s face off and you just want to cry into your pillow watching romcoms and stuff your face with Ben & Jerry’s. When Mum died, everything was about Mums or cancer.  It wasn’t at all, but that’s what I was tuned into.  Hence the current baby boom of 2015!

The irony is not lost on me that I spent most of my teens and early 20s trying to avoid the very thing that I’m so desperate for right now! In fact, we had never actually “tried” for a baby before.  Mia was unplanned and I’ll be honest, when I first found out, I crapped myself! I’d been getting a really bad stomach ache at work every time I drank my daily Diet coke (I used to be addicted to the stuff – more on this later!) and was starting to think I might have a stomach ulcer or something, when a colleague said “You’re not pregnant, are you?!”  I chuckled and then the realisation swept over me that I couldn’t even remember when my last period was! I know that sounds daft, but my job was full-on as always and my periods had always been as regular as clockwork, so I had no reason to doubt them! My body would always give me the signals that my period was on the way: bloated tummy, tender breasts and usually a grumpy mood, but I just hadn’t noticed that this was missing that month. I mean, what female in their right mind would actually yearn for a period, right?!  Well, be careful what you do and don’t wish for!

My periods had been irregular before we emigrated and I had been to see my local GP in England about having a particularly heavy bleed and then nothing for a few months. She said I had most likely had an early miscarriage and to come back again in a few months! I always felt “fobbed off” by her to be honest and the blasé way she announced that really annoyed me! Anyway, I went back, as instructed, a few months later as I still had no period and she said this happened to women all the time and not to bother coming back for at least six months! Fobbed off again! I told her we were emigrating, so she suggested I just wait until we got to Australia and see a GP there. Thank you, the ever helpful NHS! I’m not NHS bashing, I know there are lots of great, hardworking doctors and nurses out there, they just always seemed to evade me…and Ian…and my Mum! We’re just not a lucky family in that respect, I guess.

So, when we finally settled in Toowoomba and I eventually received my Medicare card (Ian living in the UK for ten years had meant that he had been wiped from the system and made everything more complicated than if we had no links to the country whatsoever! Because he had existed, they just had to find him!), I could get myself to the doctor! I explained everything to my new GP and was sent for blood tests that day. When the bloods came back, she said that it might be early menopause, or a brain tumour!!! I know they have to give you the worst case scenario for fear of being sued, but way to make me feel at ease! Went for a CT scan, which ruled out the tumour, but did announce the return of my favourite affliction: nasal bloody polyps (the technical term, of course!)!

These little buggers have been the bane of my life! I don’t have the most prominent nose, “button nose” being one of my school nicknames, along with “hamster cheeks”! (Aren’t kids lovely?!) Therefore, having extra lumps growing inside my nostrils, meant I sounded like Darth Vader at night and was constantly bunged up! It was clearly a notable affliction, as some lovely pupils got me packets of tissues as part of a leaving gift! I can envisage it now: “Can you remember Miss Bowden the French teacher? You know, the snotty one?!”  I must add, that there were beautiful gifts too, but that will always stick in my mind!  It took about two years of seeing my previous UK GP with a constant cold: “everyone gets colds love!” (another helpful soul!) before I was finally referred to an ear, nose and throat clinic and got them dealt with.  The steroids made me fat and hairy, but at least I could breathe! So, as you can imagine, I was delighted to hear they had decided to come back for a visit!

The brain tumour was ruled out, which left early menopause. I was referred to a fertility clinic the next week. I must say, the level of care and speed of referral in the Australian healthcare system has impressed me, especially after coming from the sluggish NHS with ridiculous wait times. The difference is, that here, it doesn’t all come for free, and while Medicare covers the majority of it, it won’t cover the private areas, such as a fertility clinic.  A bit of a worry, as we were living pay cheque to pay cheque following the move and owning possibly the most expensive Staffy in the world! I underwent blood tests and had a long chat with the doctor and booked an appointment for two weeks time.

The prospect of my insides being 20 years older than the rest of me upset me, but on the day I was pretty relaxed and sat down in the doctor’s office, with framed photos of his smiling family on their skiing holiday, to be told that it was early menopause. I wouldn’t be able to have another baby naturally.  My AMH reading was too low to even try IVF.  I just lost it and started crying uncontrollably. It was not what I was expecting to hear at all. “Sorry” he said, as he awkwardly patted me on the shoulder and left me in the room with his large, happy family grinning back at me. “Take your time and pay your bill at reception on the way out.”  I must have looked an absolute state to everyone in the waiting room as I was handing over my credit card to pay $250 for the pleasure of being given such great news! I was doing the chest heaving, can’t get your breath kind of sob, that if you try to get under control, just comes out worse and the poor receptionist just couldn’t look me in the eye. I made it to the car and opened the floodgates, staying there for two hours trying to get myself under control. The worst part of that was, I really needed to talk to someone, but I had no one to tell! It was the middle of the night in England, Ian was at work, Mia was at nursery and I didn’t know anyone in Toowoomba well enough at that stage to call them up in a state of distress!

You see, in the life plan, once we had settled in Australia (in our beach house with a pool in the backyard naturally! I will let that vision go one day…maybe!) we were going to try for another baby, get pregnant straight away and I would be an earth mother, stay at home mum extraordinaire, sauntering round barefoot with my baby on my hip, stress-free and content with the world. I still harbour guilt over “not doing it properly” the first time round. Due to the planned move, financial restraints and the like, I went back to work full-time when Mia was 9 weeks old.  I was so far from ready that I felt horrendous leaving her, I felt that we didn’t bond properly in the first few months and started to really resent my job for “forcing me to abandon her.” In reality, the only person that decision affected was me. Mia can’t remember and Ian was doing a great job being Daddy Daycare (he’s much more practical than me, so I’m sure a lot of unnecessary fluster was probably avoided to be honest!) but it all felt wrong for me.  I vowed when we had the second one, I would do it the way I wanted.  Now it felt like my second chance wasn’t going to happen and I was devastated.

I am aware how lucky I am to have a beautiful daughter, many people aren’t lucky enough to have their own children and I don’t need to be reminded of the fact.  I am probably more grateful of every day I get to spend with her because of this, but I really didn’t want her to be an only child and here’s why: I am an only child.  I had a great childhood. I was probably a bit too spoilt at times, but only children don’t necessarily learn to share in the same way as siblings do, so it’s something you realise as you grow up. I’ve always been pretty good at making friends – I had to be if I didn’t want to spend holidays abroad hanging out with my Mum and Dad! I can do the social butterfly, big smile on my face, larger than life persona, but truthfully I looked at big families and siblings and wanted to be part of that.  When my Mum died, I felt very alone.  I didn’t feel like anyone could understand how empty I felt inside, how I felt like a massive part of me had died.  Perhaps if I had siblings, I would have felt a bit more understood at the time, I would have had someone to stand up with me at the funeral, I would have felt like someone was going through the exact same thing as I was.  I worry about Mia having to go through that scenario on her own in the future.  I really wanted her to have siblings that will be there for her through thick and thin.  I know siblings don’t guarantee you a lifelong friend, but I see those bonds with the majority of my friends and their siblings and I envy it.  I have also seen vicious wrestling style fights where they kick hell out of each other, but I figure that’s part and parcel of the whole deal, right?!

Anyway, I went to the pharmacy with my prescription for oestrogen pills, seeing as my menopausal body was starved of it (!) and started chatting to the girl behind the counter.  She asked me if I had tried any natural therapies.  I told her that I had just found out the news and she told me a story about her sister-in-law who had been told the exact same thing, had been to a naturopath and sorted out her diet, hormone levels etc, had tried some acupuncture sessions and was currently eight months pregnant! I was shocked and wasn’t really sure what to think. I’ve always been a “go to the doctor if you’re ill” kind of person and had never really considered another way.

She put me in touch with Daniel Biernoff, a naturopath, who has been helping me ever since.  We chatted, he took some blood and in the first session, told me that he didn’t believe that I was infertile.  He thinks there are many contributing factors, the main one being stress: emigrating, death, leaving friends and family, identity change, money worries, diet, he probably could have gone on, had all taken their toll.  He completely tore up my idea of a healthy diet (I thought I ate a balanced, healthy diet, but boy, was I wrong!) and showed me where I could make tweaks and improvements.  The first thing to go was the Diet Coke and, as much as I thought I was addicted, I don’t even miss the stuff anymore! The drink I used to crave by around 3pm every day!  I started taking supplements to control the menopausal symptoms and my hormones and the outbursts and mood swings started to decrease.  Don’t get me wrong, when I blow my top you still need to duck for cover, but I’m generally feeling more in control and more balanced.

I have also started to see an emotional counsellor, who is helping me piece together why my body was shutting down and how to avoid and deal with the triggers.  Both her and the naturopath encouraged me to write this blog as a means of dealing with all the thoughts and emotion that is just swirling around my head and I truly believe that it is working.  Yes, I felt like a bit of a prat the first time I went and yes, I did question my sanity and whether I might possibly end up in some kind of institution, but actually, since daring to talk about it with people, it all feels a lot more rational than I first thought, other people have opened up about feeling the same way and I might be a bit crazy, but I’m okay with that!

The best bit?  I have started to have a cycle again! I am currently on three in a row, which is promising.  I don’t want to get my hopes up and be disappointed, but I am starting to believe that I could get pregnant again in the future?!  In the meantime, we’re “trying”!  This is a bit more clinical than you would want a spontaneous sexual relationship to be, but we are on a mission! It means more hanky panky during my fertile ten days (hubby very happy about that!), lying there like a dead cockroach for twenty minutes after the event for fear of escapees! (Very unattractive!) and a bumper pack of pregnancy tests that are currently being used at the rate of one a week! “No, it still hasn’t worked! We have to go again! No, it has to be this way, they’ll stay in better!” Trying for a baby is not romantic and it may not even work at the end of all this, but I want to feel that I’ve given it my best shot! “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again!”

Sorry…I’ve got to go…I’m ovulating!?