Here’s a whinge, the point being that if I can have an almighty hissy fit on line I don’t have to do it in the real world. Sorry peps. Also, if I manage to do it in an amusing way, somebody somewhere might laugh or conversely, realise they aren’t the only one and that would be i) positive and ii) make me happy again.

You know that bit in Pulp Fiction where Marcellus Wallis tells the boxer bloke “that’s just pride, fucking with your arse…” Well, this is just hormones fucking with mine, ok? It’s genuine though and when I sat down to write this morning, it’s what came out… so I’ve left it here.

Now, this month, I have been feeling distinctly hormonal, early. As you all know, Mr BC and I are trying to make spawn. Unfortunately for me, feeling pregnant is absolutely no different to the usual PMT I get so it’s impossible to tell when my tits start aching, my memory goes on the blink, my breath gets short, I feel dizzy and get sort of… preparatory stomach cramps whether it means I’ve hit the jackpot or am just up for a normal visit from the er… painters. Sometimes I think it may be extra bad because I’m growing a practise bag.*

*When you get pregnant the baby and stuff is inside a bag. Occasionally, you’ll grow one of these bags with nothing in it. You don’t need to have even been near a man for this to happen it’s just your body practising in case it ever needs to grow one in earnest, kind of like military exercises. This is perfectly natural and I have a theory that the months where I have particularly bad PMT, even for me and think I’m pregnant, only to get the blob as usual are months when my body is growing a practise bag. It’s a bummer but at least it means that if it has to grow a bag for real, it’s going to be very good at it.

So this month… looking at last month’s temperature chart, I thought that maybe I ovulate a bit earlier than I had previously believed and found that if this were the case, Mr BC and I had unwittingly had a shag at exactly the right time. Hoorah!

Even more intriguing, the following day I had gone for my bike ride and got the bonk, for the first time ever. Normally there is plenty of blood sugar and I’d had the usual large breakfast and not done anything out of the ordinary. It was so pronounced I had to stop and eat some blackberries on my way home. When I thought about this I remembered a friend who said she knew she was pregnant from the day after because her hormones were all over the place. I wondered but well… like I said, you never can tell…

So… a couple of days later my boobs started to ache, really badly, worse than ever before in fact – including the time I was pregnant.

Hmm… is she or isn’t she? I thought.

The painful bits abated to normal pre-blob levels after about five days but the curious light headed feeling continued and I have started to find myself getting very tired. Cautious optimism but I have a 30 day cycle, if I really have ovulated when I thought we’ve bingoed it on day 10, which means even with early testing kits I have to wait TWO WHOLE WEEKS (aaargh! For the love of God.) to find out whether or not we have created Mini Us and THREE to find out, for sure, since the first symptom arrived on day 11…

Now, not all of you will have tried for a baby but let me assure you, it’s not the fun it’s cracked up to be. You have two or three weeks where you may be pregnant each month and during those you have to decide whether you are going to act as if you are, abstaining from all things, or carry on as normal, potentially jeapordising – if doctors are to be believed – the life of your newly forming baby. So that’s three weeks of thinking things like this…

1. Should I drink wine at all? I shouldn’t if I’m pregnant but I might not be and I love the way it compliments my cooking.
2. Should I continue to exercise and if so, how, should I go about it? If pregnant “strenuous” exercise is to be avoided. How strenuous is strenuous?
3. They say “no heavy lifting” if you are pregnant. How heavy is the lifting involved? Would it cover items like the computer bag – containing my lap top and papers – which I carry down the path to my office each morning?
4. Would carrying a Dyson hoover up three flights of stairs count as “heavy lifting” if so how will I do the housework two weeks in every five?
5. What about walking down the hill from the supermarket with a bag of heavy shopping, does the heaviness go on weight or is it about what I find easy to lift? I’m always assuming the latter.
6. Does scrubbing vigorously at the fine layer of cat hair over the drawing room carpet (I was sure I closed that door) with the “stair attachment” until the perspiration drips off the end of my nose (it doesn’t, I promise but I like the comic effect of the idea) come under the title “vigorous exercise”.
7. I can go 10 miles a day on a bike at about 10 miles an hour without getting out of breath – I do get stiff and tired but not breathless… is that too vigorous?

The problem, as ever, is one of striking the happy balance between doing the things that I need to do, like housework and carrying heavy shopping, not to mention the things which keep me sane, exercising, enjoying fine wine, coffee and good food like prawns and unpasturised cheese and doing what you are supposed to do when you are pregnant – sitting still, as far as I can tell, or “walking briskly” (which bit of “my leg’s fucked and I can’t walk more than about a mile” do they not understand) not to mention avoiding doing or eating anything that might remotely be considered pleasurable (I told you this was a whinge).

So on the one hand, I should carry on as normal because otherwise when I get my period it’s ten times more galling and makes me very sad? On the other hand, while going on as normal is usually better for my mental health, if I don’t cut back and I am pregnant, will I kill my baby? What if I have been pregnant several times before now and not realised because I killed it with my sybaritic excesses? Scary. Huh?

(Yes boys, women DO over analyse… EVERYTHING, just like this in fact, I’m a laid back, pragmatic, un drama-queeny one. Even my husband says I am low maintenance.)

Now the sensible part of my brain says “you KNOW all the answers to these questions, just chill, relax and what will be will be”. It’s right, of course, but the sensible part of my brain has clearly never tried to make a baby – more to the point, if I took its advice the rest of me wouldn’t be, either!

Well… that’s what the emotion gremlins (new one for the list of fairies I think) have been doing to me for the last week. This is the most realistic and pronounced set of symptoms I’ve had outside my real pregnancy since it happened. The big tellers last time were… Sore boobs, feeling completely knackered – you know sleeping through the night and waking up feeling like you haven’t been to bed at all – and of course, feeling a bit dizzy and la-la.

This morning, I wake up and realise that no, I’m not pregnant. I’ve just got a fucking cold! Arse! D’you know, when I was a kid I used to get a cold in September each year and it would last the whole winter through. These days, it’s so long since I had one that I had forgotten what it feels like when you fight it for a while before it really takes hold. Yes! Got it in one the symptoms are sore glands (boobs), perennial knackeredness and, because your brain is slowly filling up with snot, dizzieness.

Bugger. Bugger. Bugger.

Anyone like to primal scream with me? Here we go. AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHH!

Mmmmm… that’s better.

I loathe and detest having colds! They detach you from reality, it’s like living behind a pain of glass and it goes on for ever. It takes me weeks to have colds others will throw off in a day. Yes, I’d lay bets I’m the only woman in the entire world who gets Man Flu.

There’s no point wasting an early pregnancy test now, it’s obvious what it is and god help me not only am I not pregnant but I’m going to have to put up wall of menthol versus well of snot for the next week or two, to boot! Grrrrrr…!

Everyone has to have crap days or they wouldn’t appreciate the good ones and yes, I’d lay bets many of my brothers and sisters would give their eye teeth to have this as a good day. Things could be so much worse… but I just had to have a gripe about it somewhere because it’s so blummin’ irritating.

Right then, I’d better go do some work… pipple toot.

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Stop press (10 minutes later): have just had a blub on Mr BC and feel so much better. I know for sure that I would rather spend my life with him than anyone or anything else in the world… If we don’t have kids so what, we have each other… this whole baby making thing is stupidly stressy and I really shouldn’t let it or my racing hormones get to me.

I explained Mr BC that if it was just a case of having a go and getting pregnant or not it would be ok and how it’s the conflict between my pleasure and runny-about-loving existence and what you are supposed to do when you are trying for a baby (renounce anything remotely enjoyable) which causes me to worry. We agree that once you know you are pregnant, doing the right thing will be easy, just this simple rule, if it’s fun stop it!

I really do have a bare faced cheek to complain about anything but or course that, lovely readers, is why I do it here. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to and because it’s here, I don’t feel the need to say it to the people I meet, those poor unfortunate souls who are trapped and can’t up and leave the way you can without being rude!

Thank you for indulging me.

Not that I’m a spoiled brat or anything.

Pipple toot.