Turning 30

I knew it'd feel like a milestone, but I wasn't expecting a slight surge of positivity.

It seems like I've been in a negative slump for so long now - one that's left me unable to write here, as I felt I had nothing of value to say - that the sudden arrival of go-get-em energy that's hit me since my birthday on Thursday has caught me unawares.

It's not all good - the anger's back too, and I'm crafting, in my head, another of the barren woman's hate list posts like those I wrote when I first started the blog. But then those posts, as grumpy as they are, were quite healthy in that they helped me vent.

I'm annoyed with myself, for slowing down the pursuit of pregnancy, for letting myself be stymied by apathy and defeatism. I think the 30 milestone has made me realise that, actually, there is a finite amount of time left for me to achieve this. I know I'm still young enough for a first pregnancy to be achievable, but what if we have to go through all this again for a second?

I'm also cross with the clinic we're with and the treatment we've been offered. But I also feel proactive. I feel like doing something to try to address the situation, which I haven't felt for weeks - even months. I honestly think I'd started to give up.

For my birthday, hubby took me to Paris. We're coming out of what has been the hardest patch of our relationship to date. But we're coming out of it. And in Paris, walking hand-in-hand along the banks of the Seine in milky February sunlight, I started to feel like we could actually have a baby this year. We deserve a baby. We'd be good parents. We can do this.

We walked into Notre Dame and I paid two euros to light a candle. Hubby asked me why I wanted to do this - I'm not religious - and I just shook my head as I knew I'd cry if I tried to articulate that I planned to ask for a baby.

I think he knew anyway. It may sound crass and selfish - particularly to people who are comforted by their faith - that I just leapt on the bandwagon of a pretty church to pray for what I want, but all I can say is that to me it felt like the right, even the only, thing to do.

We wandered around the cathedral while I tried to decide on the best place to light my candle and say my prayer. I was anxious to get it just right, but I was distracted by the hordes of tourists photographing the staggeringly beautiful stained glass windows and the soaring arches of the ceiling.

In the end I chose a place just beneath the statue of St Theresa. I felt drawn to her and have since learned - thanks to Wikipedia, as my level of theological ignorance is shameful - that she said "Patience obtains everything", which seems germane.

On our way out I discovered a spot that would have been much better - just beneath an effigy of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus - but I still felt I'd done the right thing. All day in Paris I imagined us bringing our child there in years to come; that night in our hotel, I dreamed of having a perfect red-haired boy. Obviously we rutted like rabbits the entire time we were there in the hope of achieving a miracle - though if we have, I shan't be following the Beckhams' example and naming the child after the city. Paris Hilton and her antics have put paid to that notion.

The most beautiful passage I've read about asking for a baby is in Mitch Albom's 'For One More Day'. I wept like a kid during most of this book but the bit that made me disgrace myself on a train was the passage where the protagonist's mother - who has died; the whole book is about him getting another day with her after her death - tells him about her own efforts to have a baby in an effort to explain to him how much he was wanted. I was going to paraphrase the passage but I won't do it justice, so here it is in full.

"'You know, for three years after I married your father, I wished for a child. In those days, three years to get pregnant, that was a long time. People thought there was something wrong with me. So did I.'

She exhaled softly. 'I couldn't imagine a life without a child. Once, I even...Wait. Let's see.'

She guided me toward the large tree on the corner near our house. 'This was late one night, when I couldn't sleep.' She rubbed her hand over the bark as if unearthing an old treasure. 'Ah. Still there.'

I leaned in. The word PLEASE had been carved into the side. Small, crooked letters. You had to look carefully, but there it was. PLEASE.

'What is it?' 'A prayer.' 'For a child?' She nodded. 'For me?' Another nod. 'On a tree?'

'Trees spend all day looking up at God.'"

I'm going to leave it there for today, but I promise to write soon - it'll help me unwind my confusion over what we should do next. And I may also be posting a good old rant...

Thirtynothing

I'm going to ring the clinic in the morning. I got another period on Sunday, a scant three weeks since the last pathetic short bleed. This one stayed for yesterday but vanished overnight, meaning it's now three full months since I had a proper, five-day clear-out.

I don't know what's the matter with me. It's so horrible going through the days knowing there's something wrong with your body but that nobody in the medical profession a) knows what it is or b) cares, till I'm 30 at least.

My 30th. It's four months away and I'm dreading it. One shouldn't dread one's 30th birthday - or at least, not for any more sinister reason than bidding a nostalgic farewell to one's debauched twenties, and acknowledging a fleeting concern about the onslaught of cellulite and wrinkles.

I just feel like I don't have much to celebrate. I know that's selfish - after all, there are people much worse off than me - but I just feel things haven't worked out the way I'd planned. My life plan says I should have an 18-month-old on my hip as I toast this birthday. I should at least have a bump.

I know I do have things to be thankful for, and that I have achieved stuff in my life. I have my own home and assets ranging from a nice little VW to a decent coffee maker. I have a job I enjoy and find stimulating. I have good friends whose company I love.

But I also have a troubled marriage where a lot of the time I wonder if we have run out of things to talk about. Seven years together is a long time. Hubby actually said, during one of the alarmingly frank and honest conversations we've been having about The State of Us of late, that most "normal" couples have, by this point in proceedings, generally reproduced and thus have something important, engaging and time-consuming on which to focus their combined efforts. We have a dragon tree plant. That's slowly turning brown.

I should state for the record that he didn't say this to be nasty or to upset me. He just said it because he thinks it. And I fully agree with him.

It's odd, watching adverts on TV, how many of them depict what I guess is deemed to be a "standard" life cycle. Ads for banks, for insurance, for any type of product or service with connotations of security and robustness, often feature an archetypal "boy and girl meet, fall in love, get married, have babies, raise babies, collect pensions, die" series of vignettes. It's not even just ads for banks, come to think of it. There's an ad for a fucking chocolate bar that depicts a similar series of events. But what happens if it doesn't work out like that for you? Which products should us thirtynothings buy?

Enough maudlin musing. What else do I have on the eve of my fourth decade? Well, I have an errant body that feels, most of the time, like it's at war with itself. I look haunted. I'm dropping weight at an alarming rate. I weigh right now what I did at 18. I tried my wedding dress on the other day and it hung off me like a sack on a skeleton. At least, I suppose, I'm not going into 30 the wrong side of "plump". At a time like this, perhaps a girl should simply appreciate her pert breasts and flat stomach and shut up her moaning.

So. I shall ring the clinic tomorrow and relate the latest turn of events. I'm considering demanding a laparoscopy. That's about the only diagnostic thing left to do to me now, and I strongly feel we should leave no stone - or indeed, organ - unturned.

One thing's certain. Should I be able, in February, to muster sufficient puff to extinguish all 30 candles, I know what I'll be wishing for.