For months now I have been reading everything and anything I could get my hands on about pregnancy. What it’s like to feel the baby move, how your ankles might swell, the do’s and don’ts of food and exercise, but what I can’t find is anything on preconception or conception itself. The only thing I have discovered is that schools nowadays offer sex education that, I assume, covers how to get pregnant as well as how not to; in my day that wasn’t the case.
Perhaps I didn’t concentrate enough in my biology class at school when we covered reproduction but I doubt that the reproductive organs of a frog could be all that relevant to my quest for parenthood. Nor did the “talk” I had when I was in my first year of secondary school help much either. All the girls were introduced to a lady dressed in a slouchy sweater, dungarees and a woolly hat – I think her name was Barbara. She proceeded to spend the next hour explaining about “changes” taking place in our body, and advertising Tampax at the top of her voice. By the end of the session Barbara was beaming and all the girls were clutching a handful of white woolly things which she had liberally distributed, suggesting that we “read the pamphlet”. As I didn’t have a need for them for another four years (I was a late developer), and couldn’t bring myself to actually use them for another five years after that, the pamphlet isn’t at all useful in my thirst for knowledge now.
That was the extent of any sex education I had at school. Frogs and tampons. I therefore decided that it was time for more professional help. When I muttered to my doctor that I had been “trying” for nine months with no result he actually laughed! Shaking his head he suggested that I relax and let nature take its course, as it could be as long as two years before I conceive.
I reported back to my husband when he came home from work what the doctor had said; I’m sorry to say that he was horrified. The thought of having to plan his social life around sex for the next two years was a major blow. To him sex is something you do when you are young and forbidden. At the age of thirty and married for three years he had planned to drift into a habit of sex on weekends and special occasions.
Sex in my view is supposed to be fun and spontaneous, not planned weeks in advance so as to find the most fertile time – now I have little dots in my diary with the occasional star over a certain date. I began my campaign in earnest this month and now leave a discrete post-it note by my husband’s briefcase on certain mornings suggesting that he takes it easy at work so that he is not too tired to enjoy the evening ahead.
As tonight is a post-it note night I have decided to forget about frogs and liberate myself by digging out Barbara’s pamphlet for a ceremonial burning before I shave my legs, wash my hair and wriggle into my sexy black underwear. I’ve figured out that, apart from folic acid, seducing your husband is the best piece of pre-conceptual advice I can give anyone.