Just a little thing I want to tell you about

It's been a rather fraught couple of months here, to be honest. I hesitate to use a tired phrase like "rollercoaster of emotions", but until they invent another thing that has the same exhilarating highs, unexpected and terrifying lows, and twisty bits where you just don’t know which way is up, then the rollercoaster analogy will have to do.

It all started a couple of months ago. Jane didn’t like the taste of a cheese and pickle sandwich I’d made her. She was also feeling strangely tired. She told me both these things, and my brain took the two facts and cogitated upon them for a while. Eventually it reported back with a hypothesis, namely: “woohoo! I get to eat her sandwich!”

I think women’s brains works differently from men’s, because given the same two facts Jane arrived at “I need to go to the bathroom and wee upon a small white plastic paintbrush thing.”

You see? It’s like they’re from a different planet. Someone should write a book about that sometime.

Anyway, I was blissfully unaware of Jane's activities (probably distracted by the extra sandwich) until she reappeared clutching the aforementioned paintbrush thing and said tremulously “I think I’m pregnant”.

There was a line on the indicator that meant something but it was the wrong way up to the way it was shown in the diagram next to the legend “positive”. There was also a very very faint line running the other way which kinda made it look like a plus sign, and the limited information on the indicator itself didn’t mention plus signs at all. Jane, of course, had thrown away the box with the proper full instructions on, so all we had to go on was the rather limited diagram on the plastic paintbrush thingy itself.


Cue a late-night dash to the supermarket to buy another, more expensive, pregnancy test. Jane retired to the bathroom with another plastic paintbrush thing and a small empty Gü pudding bowl (which we'd saved for making crème brûlée in but i'm never ever going to eat out of again, even if it is thoroughly washed). Anyway, that pregnancy test gave a more emphatic “yes”. Cue lots of excited jumping about and ringing of close family, just because we had to tell someone.

The next day Jane came back from an early appointment from the doctor, her face ashen. The test the doctor had carried out had given an almost invisibly faint line, and he was worried about a couple of other indicators Jane was experiencing. There was also talk of the possibility of something called “ectopic pregnancy”. After being so happy the night before, it was all a bit of a shock to the system.

Because of the uncertainty, the doctor decided to throw the NHS at us. For the first time since I’ve worked for the organisation it’s big guns were wheeled out for me, in the form of endless blood tests, scans, and friendly ladies with reassuring dark blue uniforms. This simultaneously heartened us, and played on our worries, because as fantastic as medical science is these days, it can’t make Mother Nature work any faster than she wants to. We’ve had a few weeks of news which was never actually terrible, just never particularly good. And lots of lots of waiting.

Until today when I sat with Jane (who has a new blog address, by the way), and we watched as a little comma-shaped blob swam into focus on a computer screen. In the middle of the blob, a couple of pixels flickered away, the pulsing of a tiny brand-new heart.

Then it hit home, really for the first time.

I’m going to be a dad!