Like most of life’s major events, we Irish respond with a cocktail of anxiety, excitement, shame and ‘sure it’ll be grand.
After coming off the pill the week after my wedding, I was dumbfounded to find that I didn’t fall pregnant at the mere sniff of a you-know-what.
After a few months of, ‘Ah sure, nobody gets pregnant straight away’, the anxiety started to seep in and it was all I could think about. When was it going to happen? Was it ever going to happen?
I did land vagina first on my BMX as a 12 year old. Could that have done some damage?
And then. Something shifted. I was a few days late and as well as that, I had ‘the feeling’.
I did what any married, trying-for-a-baby, 32-year-old would do.
I freaked out. Completely.
I ignored the fact that I was most likely, totally and absolutely pregnant and decided I would postpone it all for a few days. I went to the gym, went to the cinema, met with friends and generally behaved like I hadn’t a care in the world.
About five days later, I began to feel dizzy. It was time. I nervously bought a pregnancy test and scurried past my dinner-cooking husband into the bathroom with it, before he could catch me. I’m not sure what I thought he would do to me on capture, it’s not like I was smuggling cocaine, right?
I’d never had a pregnancy scare as a teenager, but I felt like a quivering 15-year-old.
What will I do if it says yes? How will I tell my parents?
No sooner had I the peestick in the bin, thinking there must have been a way to do that without getting a hand wet, that I found myself in the kitchen face-to-face with the husband who was mid-carrot chop. He had a knife. (I don’t know why that’s relevant.)
“I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Now, I’ve seen the movies. I know what’s supposed to happen. Shock, followed by an embrace, followed by ecstatic exclamations, declarations of love and ending with a last few joyful tears.
Not so for us.
A little bit of ‘Are you sure?’, a lot of ‘That’s mad’, and plenty of ‘Let’s see what the doctor says’.
The ‘let’s see what the doctor says’ was from the husband. He wanted to get excited but he didn’t believe me. I couldn’t blame him for deferring his reaction – I’d had all this in my brain for the guts of a week, he had it for the length of five prepped carrots.
A few days later the doctor confirmed our news, in that way that they do.
“Have you done a test?”
“Yes.”
“And it was positive?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re pregnant.”
Husband believed Doctor. We were on our way.
Funny mum Sharon Mannion is currently appearing as Concepta in ‘Bridget and Eamonn’ on RTE2. Join the conversation on Twitter @HerFamilydotie.
