The barren woman's hate list: item #9 - Pregnancy vitamins

It amazes me that I have not yet mentioned how much these little puppies vex me.

Let me first say that I believe they are extremely valid and important. I would advise any woman trying to conceive to make sure she at least takes her 400 micrograms of folic acid every day, even if she doesn't want to go the whole hog with the Omega-3 oils, because the advantages proper folic acid consumption give a growing baby are immense and proven.

But hell. My problems with pregnancy vitamins are manifold.

For a start, it's the marketing. Every brand is the same: a smug, beaming woman grinning beatifically and yet with some measure of surprise at her bump, as if mildly astonished to see it there. I start every day by waking and wishing I had a child. To then trudge downstairs and be confronted with said woman's joyous countenance before I've even ingested orange juice is sometimes more than I can stomach.

Secondly, the price. These vitamins are at least a third more expensive than regular daily multivits. If you go for one of the super-duper Omega-3 brands - "for brain and eye development!" sings the packaging, as if any wannabe mother plans on having a brainless, blind child - you're talking £10 to £12 for a 30-day supply.

Fair enough if you're one of the blessed souls that produces offspring using the following maths: select preferred month of birth (hmm, spring baby or autumn baby?), count back nine months, mount husband on appropriate day.

However, that's a lot of money every pay packet when you've been trying three years or more.

Yet still, doggedly, one almost feels pointlessly, I take them. Every day. Religiously, with my cornflakes and OJ. It actually bothers me if I'm away from home and forget to bring my vitamins with me. "What about the brain and eye development of the big fat fucking nothing that's growing inside you?" my inner voice yells.

I'm on Pregnacare at the moment. It's always either those or Sanatogen Pro-Natal, depending which are on special offer. (Both fulfil the brain and eye criteria, so it's an even toss.) I hate Pregnacare especially because they come in truly inconvenient blister packs, with a purple oblong folic acid tablet in one and a bulbous oil-filled brain-and-eye capsule in the other. The blister packs don't quite fit in the box with the instructions, which tend to get crumpled at the bottom and take more room than they ought, meaning you end up ramming and cramming the blister packs back in the box while pounding the whole lot off the kitchen counter (smug pregnant lady facedown, obviously) for good measure.

And this is how I start my days. Is it any wonder I'm losing my mind?

The barren woman's hate list: item #8 - Facebook

The problem with Facebook is that it's full of people you don't really like or care about.

I want to qualify that statement for the select few people who know my real identity and are also friends with me on Facebook. What I mean to say is that I have 100 friends on Facebook. That puts me in a camp of people who, whilst not Facebook sluts, accepting friend requests left, right and centre just to boost their total, certainly have more Facebook "friends" than they have real, genuinely close buddies.

The majority of Facebook friend lists are made up of old schoolmates and fellow university alumni, ex-colleagues and people you worked in shops with during summers when you were 20. I haven't seen many of the people in my Facebook friend list for years; nor do I want to in several cases. But I know the ins and indeed the outs of their reproductive prowess - and in many cases I know what their reproductive systems look like on the inside.

I don't know what planet you'd need to be born on to have the remotest desire to change your Facebook profile picture to a scan photo. The profile pic is meant to be something that represents you - be that a photo or a cartoon, it should be personal and meaningful. It should not be a photo of the contents of your uterus. I elected to use a photo of myself paddling in the Gulf of Mexico as my profile pic. It never occurred to me to use the snap of my Fallopian tubes, taken by the radiologist during my HSG.

It's amazing how many people do it, though. It actually induces a roar of misery in me when I log on and see that "X has changed her profile pic" next to a grainy black-and-white thumbnail of an ultrasound.

Obviously the news of the pregnancy is not a shock, because the smug bastards have already announced that to the world through the medium of Facebook status updates. You know the sort of thing. "X is pregnant!" followed by 807 messages of congratulation; then for weeks thereafter, "X has morning sickness because she's pregnant", "X's back is hurting because of her big fat pregnancy", "X wonders if you're all aware that she's pregnant, isn't she BLOODY clever?"

I've considered - at some length - staging a protest by using Facebook to describe my own progress through the hell of infertility. "Helen is on her way to the hospital to have a series of unpleasant instruments rammed up her bits." "Helen is bleeding like a stuck pig for the 36th month since this nightmare began." "Helen is lying on her back with her legs up the wall as her husband's sperm trickles slowly but surely onto the pillow."

But that wouldn't be appropriate, would it? And not just because many of my Facebook friends are also professional colleagues. It'd make people uncomfortable, for one thing, and it'd force them into lavishing sympathy on me. It would just not be the done thing.

Which is exactly why Facebook shouldn't be used to crow about pregnancy. The people close to a pregnant woman, who really matter in her life - her partner, family, closest friends - should already know and care that she's pregnant, and should be giving her the love, congratulations and support that she needs. The majority of people on Facebook - the ones she went to school with ten years ago - couldn't give the remotest fuck, and nor should they. So stop bragging.

A long time coming

My viewing of The Sex Education Show is inducing apoplexy each week.

I knew this would happen. Hubby warned me it would, too. And they haven't even done the programme about fertility yet - that's tomorrow night. So far they've tackled how to spice up a knackered sex life (sadly, I fear it is too late for a doctor on that score for us); how to avoid catching a series of scary rot-inducing diseases (answer: condoms); and how pregnancy affects sex and the body.

The pregnancy episode in particular induced some serious yelling at the TV. It followed an equally annoying programme called Would Like To Meet Again, which follows up couples who were set up on blind dates by the programme makers two years ago. Cue Jack and Jill, or whatever their names are, who're - guess what? - married with two babies. Well, congratubloodylations Jack and frigging Jill, you smug, smug shits.

Then the sex show started, and it was all about pregnancy. Hubby ascertained this, made a small noise somewhere in the back of his throat, and retired upstairs with his book and some body armour.

"Labour can go on for up to four days," said the programme, which went out of its way to depict a near-religious level of awe for the appalling suffering women put themselves through in the name of giving birth. Well, diddums. So far my infertility's gone on for two-and-a-half years. So you'll pardon me if my heart doesn't bleed - another part of me's doing more than enough of that on a monthly basis.

Then there was a bit that explained the changes pregnant women's bodies go through, complete with two exceptionally smug ladies wielding different-sized bumps. The programme discussed the concept of the "mask of pregnancy", whereby a woman's forehead and cheeks can darken. This had in fact happened to one of the women, and I found myself absurdly pleased by the sight of her stupid brown patchy face.

(I realise I am sounding like more of a bitch here than possibly I ever have before, which is saying something, but I'm trying to be honest. I know it's not just me who feels this horrible, impotent rage.)

It got me wondering about what "the mask of infertility" looks like, if there is such a thing. I think there is. I was looking through old photos earlier, trying to locate one of a scary stately home I once visited which one of hubby's colleagues also has a horror story about. I couldn't find it, but I did find lots of snaps of myself as a teenager and student. Some were taken a decade ago, some 12 years ago, so it's reasonable that I should look older now - but what shocked me is how much sadder, and somehow less alive, I look. I really, really miss the girl I used to be before this. I see her only rarely now, and find there are fewer and fewer people who can bring her out.

Anyway, the programme concluded by filming a birth. Our intrepid narrator Anna was present throughout, which involved spending most of a day and night in a maternity ward getting bored or scared by the sound of screaming. At one point, she asks the camera: "Did you ever think waiting for a baby would be such a hoo-hah?"

No. I fucking DIDN'T.

I'd managed to get myself so riled up that I didn't think I'd cry at the moment of birth. But then they played that bloody song, the one that goes "Baby, you've been a long time coming/Such a long, long time/And I can't stop smiling". And that really fucked me up.

After all that, they called the kid Willow. I mean, I ask you.

The bitch is back

Not a good day.

First off, we found a lump on my cat's back. He's nearly 17, so I've had him more than half my life, and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm besotted with him and always have been. I love him like a baby, which is appropriate given he's the closest thing I'll probably ever have to one. A lump at age 17 can't be good news, so he's booked in at the vet's tomorrow for an examination. Another thing to worry about - and my worry barrel is pretty brimming just now.

Next - and this is more in the "infuriating" than "upsetting" category - hubby is complaining of having "done his back in". What this means in reality, given he's only 34, doesn't have a physical job where back injuries are commonplace, and has no genetic conditions that predispose him to back pain, is that he slept a bit funny and has had a twinge. However, him being a bloke, this is The End Of The World.

The word "agony" has been used. Much ibuprofen - a good deal more than I ingested last week - has been consumed. There is talk of time off work. Most importantly of all, sex is off the menu. No, siree. He refuses point blank - apparently, it'd be "impossibly painful".

I struggle to sympathise. Surviving the HSG has somewhat inflated my perception of my own pain threshold - perhaps arrogantly so - but bitchiness aside, I feel that he should just get the fuck on with it, the way I usually have to do.

We know - we know - that there is a higher incidence of pregnancy in the month or so immediately after the HSG. This week - tomorrow, in fact - sees day 14 of this cycle. Do I need to draw him pictures?!

It just seems a shame for me - and yes, me; it was me on the table - to have gone through all that for us to waste potentially the brightest opportunity to conceive since this whole sorry business began.

The logical part of me knows I must wait only another month until our follow-up at the clinic and hopefully our first course of ovulation-stimulating drugs. But I want to make the most of this chance! If our baby can possibly be conceived without pumping me full of hormones in a manner not dissimilar to a cow being readied for breeding, then surely that's a good thing!

Told you I'd be ranting again soon. Don't hate me too much.

Update on my extremely stupid body

Well, still no bastard period.

I finally did a test this morning and, of course, it was negative. But where is my period? It's never done this before - it has started and then retreated for a day or two before returning with a vengeance, but it's never started then vanished for four days.

We're now in a position where one of three things can happen:

1) My period arrives today or tomorrow, behaves itself, and finishes on Thursday in time for me to have the HSG on Friday morning. As by far the best option, this is pretty well guaranteed NOT to happen.

2) My period stays away until later in the week, thus ruling out the HSG by being still in full flow when it's supposed to take place. I have to cancel the HSG, cancel my day's leave from work, and basically cancel my LIFE until my turn on this hellish merry-go-round next month.

3) My period stays away full stop. I have to cancel the HSG because I can't have it till I've had a period - aside from anything else, it's been six weeks now and my womb will be full of endometrium crap, so that'd skew the results anyway. I then have to exist in a state of semi-derangement wondering if I'm magically pregnant (though by now, if I were it'd be the next Messiah since hubby and I haven't had it off since mid-March) or if in fact my entire reproductive system has somehow crawled out of my vagina and disappeared on a Ferris Bueller-style jaunt without my knowing.

FUCK. I hate this. It's ridiculous because, as scared as I am, I actually want the HSG now. I want it over with, I want to know the state of my tubes, I want to have made some progress. And I suppose a small, dark part of me wants to punish my lazy, useless, incompetent collection of rude bits, in a sort of "you've messed me around so much, so let's see how you like THEM apples" motif.

The grumbling crampiness and sore boobs of this time last week have all but vanished and I don't feel the least bit periody. Could I somehow have just missed one? Of all the months for that to happen!

Now that I've tested and categorically know there's no baby, I'm going to head to the gym and pound the crap out of myself to see if I can kickstart it that way.

If that fails, I've officially run out of ideas.

Are you kidding me?

A pregnant bloke?

A PREGNANT BLOKE????

I'm sorry, but are you HAVING A LAUGH?!

It's really a sad state of affairs when it's easier for a man to conceive than it is for me.

I got my period in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Saying that, what I mean is I got a smear of blood on Wednesday which I assumed was my period, so after a) crying so much my eyes puffed out and b) having a massive fight with hubby about the fact that I'm scared of the HSG, I got up for work and, on the way, rang the hospital to book in for the hideoussalpingogram itself.

The lady I spoke to was lovely, and I'm in next Friday at 11am. However, my period never actually started. Aside from the nocturnal smear of blood and a little bit of brown sludge over the past few days, I've not started bleeding properly.

What the fuck's it playing at? I'm booked in now, and if it doesn't start flowing tomorrow, it won't have finished in time for the HSG to happen.

It's one thing to have polycystic ovaries. It's one thing not to be able to conceive even after two years of trying harder than I've ever tried for anything.

It's quite another when your own body seems hell-bent on making life as difficult as possible.

How do you wage war against yourself?

The barren woman's hate list: item #7 - Baby on Board stickers

Let's face it, it was only a matter of time before I turned my attention to these things.

To be honest, they irritated me even before the fertility stuff. Are those of us unfortunate enough to be driving behind these muppets supposed to slap our foreheads sheepishly and say "Darn it! I WAS going to rear-end you and total both our cars, but now I know there's a kid involved I'll refrain." Nowadays, as you might imagine, the stickers positively incense me.

I mean, they're bragging. That's it, pure and simple. They scream "I'm fertile! I'm fertile! I'm fertile!" in a loud voice. People may as well tape photos of their vaginas, cocks and balls to their rear windscreen, accompanied by a sign that says: "The collection of hairy objects pictured above are all in fine working order!"

I was expressing these opinions publicly once, and was told rather sniffily that Baby on Board stickers actually are very sensible because they alert the emergency services to look for a baby when they attend the scene of a car crash.

Big hairy bollocks. No, they don't. You're not going to tell me paramedics will only consider the prospect that a child might be aboard if they see one of those stickers! I'd imagine that the first thing ambulance crews are trained to do is assess the vehicle to determine the number of occupants. It beggars belief that they'd only check for kids if instructed to do so by a Little Miss Naughty sign from Mothercare.

Mind you, road rage is not something I've experienced only as a result of recent trauma. I've always been a horribly angry driver. My worst habit - and I've been doing this for years - is to bray "Come on, let's be FAHKING 'AVIN YA!" in a deranged fake Cockney accent when traffic lights turn green and the person at the front of the queue isn't IMMEDIATELY poised to pull away.

I also hate over-engineered gadgets in cars, such as the thermometer in mine that DING-DING-DINGs alarmingly if the temperature drops below 3 degrees. It does this in the middle of driving, and scares the bejesus out of me every time. In fact, mark my words, if I'm ever in a one-car crash that seems to defy explanation as to how it happened, it will be because of that stupid thermometer dinging in my ear. I've been known to shout at it - hubby once climbed into the car just as I was roaring "Shut up! I don't care how cold it is! I COULD - NOT - GIVE - A - TOSS!" He got that look on his face, the one that says "What have I married?".

There's a good reason why the scene in Fawlty Towers where Basil batters seven shades of shit out of his car with a branch is one of my favourite comedy moments ever. I can actually see myself doing the same thing.

Yes, when all's said and done, it's not really a big surprise that fertility stuff has turned me into a boiling, raging monster. I was halfway there already.

A rant on bags and wombache

I'm having a glass of very cold white wine.

While I was travelling down the escalator to catch my train home, some scum-sucking, bottom-feeding shitbiscuit of a human being ripped the little leather dog off the new Radley handbag that I got for my birthday and ran off, cackling maniacally.

I know that in the grand scheme of city crime, this is not a big deal. I also know that I am lucky: I was wearing an iPod, a new watch, and carrying my work laptop (in a Radley briefcase which also has no fucking leather dog anymore, as I ripped that one off in a fit of pique when it kept jamming in the zip).

In fact, that my assailant chose to purloin a small leather dog rather than any of the more valuable possessions listed above indicates what a profoundly stupid turd she (yes, she - no doubt she has 17 babies at home as well) is.

But the pointless stupidity of the crime makes it all the more enraging. I mean, what, pray tell, does she plan to do with it? Sew it onto her crappy Asda bag and pretend it's designer? Start a leather gimp-dog kennel for Barbies?

The bag was new, and from my mum, and lovely. It's now sitting looking rather forlornly at me, with the empty "lead" on which the dog once hung dangling ineffectually, rather like a flaccid penis.

Perhaps I wouldn't be so upset if I weren't already pissed off about the fact that I am bleeding like a stuck pig, and suffering one of those periods that makes you wish you were a boy, and hate boys for not having things like wombs that cramp and ache and twist all the livelong day.

It's the sort of period where you waddle leakily to the toilet every two hours only to discover that you're too late and scenes from the Saw trilogy have been reenacted in your pants. The sort that delivers unexpected stabbing wind-type pains up through your bits, which cause you (even in meetings) to leap out of your chair with an aggrieved expression, in the manner of someone who has suffered a similar fate to Edward II.

So that's why I'm having a glass of very cold white wine.

The power of positive thinking?

Engaged in conversation with my uni mate via text message on Friday night, I attempted one of the wisecracks that are beginning to characterise my strategy for dealing with that big, messy bundle of emotion that comes under the generic heading "fertility stuff".

We were debating the logistics of care for her baby during a planned trip from her home in Fife to see her sister play in concert here in March. "If u like, my mum wld b happy 2 babysit," I texted. "She's gr8 wth babs and won't ever get chance 2 use her skills due 2 my fckd repro sys!"

My poor mate probably didn't know how to respond to that, and who can blame her? This is what I'm increasingly tending to do in conversations that veer towards reproduction - I'll attempt (usually crap) "jokes" in an attempt both to make light of the situation and to avoid any uncomfortable silences in which the assembled company wonders if I'm going to get upset.

I did it again last night. We had friends over for hubby's party piece dinner of tuna steaks, salsa verde and spinach. It was a superb night - another much-needed dose of really good fun. After a fair bit of wine, the evening reached the point where we were all demonstrating the various quirks and freakish talents of double-jointedness that we'd been blessed with... as you do. (I seem to have more of these than most - I can do a selection of impressive bendy things with my fingers, and it's comforting to know that should my career ever veer off track, there'll always be a place for me in a circus sideshow.)

Anyway, this was the backdrop for another of my barbed little jibes at my own situation. It had just been revealed that both hubby and I can sit on the floor in a weirdly yogic position that implies doubly-double-jointed hipbones.

Much merriment ensued. "It's such a shame we can't have children," I then unnecessarily pointed out. "Imagine how bendy they'd be!" I don't know why I did it, and continue to do it, other than that taking the piss out of it, and ranting at it, seems to be my natural coping strategy.

The response I got to my text "joke" on Friday was as follows: "Aw mate, don't say that, think positive, it's bound 2 help in some mysterious way".

At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to sound like Carrie Bradshaw, that got me thinking. Thinking positively is not something I've been doing throughout this experience. Optimism's not, as any readers who know me personally will be well aware, something that comes naturally to me anyway. I'm not the most upbeat, life-affirming type of gal in the most ordinary of circumstances, having inherited my father's propensity to "rage against the coming of the night". Being positive in the face of the genuine adversity of infertility is a ridiculous notion.

But would it help? Usually I think that people who skip about the world grinning inanely and proselytizing about the glass being half-full would be immeasurably improved by being shot at dawn. The procedure needed to turn me into one of them would be reminiscent of Jekyll and Hyde, and infinitely more traumatic than the HSG!

I categorically doubt the effect of positive thinking anyway. A recent study said that being optimistic and upbeat had absolutely no bearing on the survival rate in cancer patients. Now don't imagine that I've finally disappeared up my own arse in a fit of self-pity by comparing my situation to a terminal illness - I am not (yet) that self-obsessed. All I'm saying is that smiling lots and visualising flowers unfurling is not going to make my ovary magically not polycystic.

To put it more succinctly, I turn to a passage from Ben Elton's Inconceivable - a brilliant novel that's by turns funny and heartbreakingly accurate, and which is far superior to its subsequent film adaptation, Maybe Baby.

"I keep screaming inside, why the hell should I have to imagine a baby? Why can't I just have one?! Far less nice people than me have lots, and it's just not fair."

That's the absolute crux of it. Instead of an egg each month, I have a boiling ball of rage, frustration, jealousy and a sense of plain old Kevin the Teenager injustice.

The barren woman's hate list - item #6 - pregnancy films

I realise that there is emerging something of a theme to these diatribes - that is, anyone who's pregnant when I'm not makes the list.

However, I couldn't resist mentioning the recent spate of teenybop, American Pie-style rom coms with pregnancy as their theme, all of which imply that getting a bun in the oven is as simple as selecting a new lip gloss - and then, during the labour scenes, that ejecting said bun is only about as uncomfortable as a bikini wax.

Knocked Up would be the most obvious recent example - and boy, did they trail that film relentlessly - but last night I witnessed a trailer for a new flick called Juno, which appears to be about a gestating 8-year-old. A bus swooshed past me this morning carrying a board for the film. "Everyone's gonna love Juno!" the tagline claimed confidently. I can assure them that they're wrong.

It's worth saying that last night's trailer for this celluloid knife in the heart was sandwiched between the Pampers ad where the baby girl is trying on her mum's shoes, and the Clearblue Digital pregnancy test advert.

Tell me why I don't like Mondays.

The barren woman's hate list - item #5: celeb bumps

I realise this diatribe has echoes of my previous post condemning all pregnant women, but to me pregnant celebrities deserve a rant all of their own.

First of all, how MANY of them are there?! I'm sure when I was avidly reading Smash Hits, More! and Heat as a teenager and student, and even in my early twenties, the world was not populated exclusively by knocked up actresses and popstars. Every show I watch seems to reveal another gestating geisha girl: Myleene Klass, Lauren Laverne - and those are just the most recent that spring to mind!

The worst ones are those who are given the gift of a child despite an improbably hedonistic lifestyle, and then proceed to piss motherhood up the wall by engaging in unseemly activities such as alcoholism, drugs, anorexia and being photographed with no pants on. I'm not sure if blog ranting can result in being sued for libel, but Britney Spears and Nicole Richie, I'm thinking of YOU. Anyway, my understanding of libel is that it has to be untrue.

The barren woman's hate list - item #4: my own reproductive system

One of the hardest things about this whole experience is that I feel I am at war with myself. Ever since we got hubby's sperm test back (the results, I mean - they didn't post us the crusty pot) and thus confirmed that the problem is solely with me, I've felt that my own body is conspiring against me.

Here's a dark confession: the other night I sat in the bath and actually had a conversation with my own sexual organs.

I told them that with the days till our consultation at the clinic ticking down, they had only a finite window of opportunity in which to get their acts together and basically comply with the demands of the role nature gave them. I said they had better consider this a final warning, as further disciplinary reviews would not be forthcoming.

I ended with the following words: "Because if you don't, I will subject you to an increasingly invasive, painful and humiliating series of tests. You will be rammed, scraped, probed, pumped, injected with chemicals, and stared up by a succession of probably male doctors, and you will crack before I do."

I believe I may then have slapped my own lower stomach, hard, in frustration.

Now that's not normal, is it?!

The barren woman's hate list - item #3: pregnancy tests

It's amazing the amount of vitriol and bitterness I can feel towards an inanimate bit of plastic. But by God do I despise these things.

The digital ones are worst - there's something so nasty and final about reading the words "Not pregnant", and you can't exactly hold them up to the light in the hope the "Not" will vanish - but their prohibitive cost means I've only graced them with my hCG-less wee once or twice. (When feeling flush, kerboom. See what I did there?)

I don't have a favourite brand - again, cost means I usually resort to Boots' or Sainsbury's own - but I definitely prefer the ones you can pee directly onto. Clarting around with a small pot and a lively stream of wee without my contacts in is not among my top-choice ways to start the day.

What I hate most about pregnancy tests is how soul-destroying it is to "fail" one. Because my periods are so irregular, there's often the temptation "just to check". Every time I say I'm not going to do one, but every time I wake up at 5am and brew a wee knowing full well I'm going to tiptoe to the bathroom, turn on the tap so hubby doesn't hear the cellophane rustling, and pee on a stick to my heart's content.

There's the brilliant moment where you're waiting for it to work - I usually cover it with a bit of bog roll so I can hope for longer - when you imagine what the joy would be like were it to be positive.

But then there's the inevitable blank result window, and every time sees me squinting and scrutinising it pathetically, holding it to the bathroom light in my desperation to see a line that never has been and probably never will be there.

The barren woman's hate list - item #2: smug tickertape things

By this I mean those wretched, bastard tickers that pregnant women and new mums insist on having at the end of every piece of email correspondence or forum post they submit.

Most of the tickers chart how many weeks pregnant its owner is, and are illustrated with insipid pictures of bunnies and butterflies and other such girly shite.

As the pregnancy progresses and the ticker owner's fervour grows, they can even be adorned with photos of the baby in the womb. Bah.

Even worse are the tickers charting how old the bloody baby is after the birth. My question to the women who use these is: Where do you plan to stop? It's all very well notifying your every last acquaintance that "My baby is 10 weeks and 2 days and 4 hours and 18 minutes and 42 precious cutesy seconds old", but what's the cut-off point? Can we look forward, in a few years' time, to alerts such as "My baby had his first wet dream today" or "My baby's divorce papers came in the post this morning"?

So here's my pledge to you all, my fledgling blog community: if I ever do manage to conceive a baby, I will never - mark this, EVER - create a ticker or anything similar with which to festoon this blog, my emails, or any other piece of correspondence I care to dispatch.

And while we're on the subject, I shall never send any round-robin emails containing graphic, too-much-information slideshows of my scan photos, the labour and birth, me breastfeeding or baby's first dump to every last contact in my address book either. That's a promise.

Any mums or pregnant ladies who may have stumbled on this bilious and rage-filled blog might also like to heed a bit of friendly advice. Before you send an email that includes a ticker, stop to think for just one second of any friends you have who are or may be trying for a baby. Just consider their feelings and delete the ticker in your messages to them - it won't kill you, and it'll have the double Brucie bonus of meaning they won't want to kill you either.

The barren woman's hate list - item #1: other pregnant women

Obviously I realise this makes me sound like a demon, but the point of this blog is to be honest with myself about my feelings and hopefully reach out to other women who share them.

So yes, I loathe, despise and detest other pregnant women with a fanaticism bordering on psychotic. Particularly the ones who absently stroke their bumps while talking to you or browsing the supermarket shelves.

They just look so bloody smug. And they're everywhere - or did I just not notice them before?