Yo, Yo, Yo, Yo, Baby-Pop

"Come with a full bladder" said the nurse "and the letter of referral from your consultant". So on Friday morning I put both in my handbag and presented myself at eight in the AM, belly-up and bare, for an ultrasound. The doctor slathered me in cold jelly and ran the scanner across my goosebumped gut, sighed and then told me that I needed to go and have a cup of tea or ten and come back. "But I'm bursting!" I whined as I flopped back down off the bed and wriggled back into my dress. "Come back at nine" he said "and you will be".

I waddled back at nine, bow-legged after two mugs of tea and four glasses of water, to find that the waiting room was full of people shifting uncomfortably in their seats, clutching little plastic cups of water, fear and wee welling up in their eyes. The nurse looked worried for her carpets. By half nine I could take no more, so I went to the desk to ask the nurse if she could have the doctor see me next as it was rapidly becoming a matter of some urgency, but all that came out was "PLEEEEASE". Two minutes later I was on my back again, covered in goo and under cross-examination about my poly-cystic ovaries as the doctor prodded at my piss-swollen abdomen with his scanner. And two minutes after that again, he was done. "I have your measurements now" he said. “TOILET” I said, hoiking my tights up under my armpits and scrambling for the bathroom door without even stopping to slip my shoes back on. He left them on the floor outside the bathroom door for me to find when I’d finished. I suppose he’s used to that sort of thing.

The last time I had an ultrasound was eight years ago. The doctor then told me to go off and lose a bit of weight like a good girl and not to be worrying about having babies til I was old and married. I didn't go back to him. I went home and cried instead, and two years and some internet research later, got a referral to an endocrinologist from my GP. The first doctor was a gynaecologist, and the kind of man no right-thinking woman would let near her vagina under non-medical circumstances. The endocrinologist was a woman in her mid thirties who had a much better understanding of why a single woman in her early twenties would be working to make sure that she'd have some chance of having babies, should she happen to meet the man of her dreams one wet Wednesday night in Whelans. We've a good relationship, and I trust her. She manages to be positive and realistic all at once. I see her every six months or so and I leave her office feeling encouraged. Or I did. Last week, I left it feeling sad. We went over my latest blood results and then, for the first time, we had to talk about how it's not happening. Not that it won't ever happen, because it very might, but it hasn't so far and (given the enthusiastic effort Andrew and I have been putting in) it probably should have. There are a few things she’d like me to try before we talk seriously about IVF, which is why I ended up almost wetting myself last Friday morning. She talked me through what she’s proposing (clomifene and crossed fingers) and then asked me how I was. “I know the hardest part for me when we were having difficulties conceiving” she said “was everyone bloody else”.

She’s not wrong. Well-meant nudges and winks can feel like pushing and shoving when you’re having a bad day, and it’s difficult to know how to handle gentle, unsolicited encouragement. Smile and nod? Confess to having difficulties conceiving a child and joke about asking the Credit Union for a loan to buy one instead? I’ve always been open and honest about my fertility issues with anyone who’s asked, but that’s harder to maintain when you have a partner and his feelings to consider and the dogs on the street are asking when you’re planning on popping one out because they heard you got hitched a while back. I’m still getting used to the idea that we have fertility issues, not just me. Though it’s of no small comfort to realise that he’s thought of it that way from the get-go. What a mighty good man.