UPFRONT:I MET A lovely man at an art exhibition in Delgany in Co Wicklow last weekend, a regular reader of this column, who practically begged me on bended knee not to keep going on about pregnancy and babies in this space from now until D-day - which, for those interested in such details, falls around early May.
And I empathise with him, I do. I too have an aversion to people blabbing on about this perfectly natural and non-earth shattering event that occurs in the life of some women. And yet, when it happens to be happening to you for the first time, it's somehow impossible to think about anything else what with all the involuntary loud burping and the addiction to Solero ice-creams and the small matter of trying to get your head around the notion that there is something alive inside you. A Thing. Living. And Growing. Inside You.
So to that lovely man, and any other readers dreading the same thing, I hereby issue an apology and a warning that I intend to explore this exact topic until the end of this week's column. So feel free to turn the page and read about Louise East's new life in Berlin. I won't be offended. Honest.
The fact is, I am seriously hoping that when I've got the following stuff off my rapidly expanding chest I can return to more engaging subjects such as why Queenie, my regally nicknamed mother-in-law-in-waiting, always asks me at least seven million times if I want a cup of tea even though I don't drink tea and I said "no" the first time she asked three hours ago, bless her bleach collection.
And anyway, lots of people have been e-mailing asking questions about the pregnancy and giving advice about the pregnancy which leads me to assume that some of you might actually be interested in the details. But if I sometimes stray into the realm of TMI (Too Much Information) then I apologise for that, too.
When people ask whether we were trying to have a baby, which they do with surprising regularity, I tell them truthfully that we were "open to the possibility". As my sister used to put it, "if God blesses you". And if "God" hadn't "blessed" us we were content to get on with the delightful business of being Child Free, knowing we already had a fine quota of niblings (nieces and nephews) and that being parents wasn't meant to happen to us. Incidentally, we've been officially kicked out of our local chapter of the "Child Free By Choice Association". How I'll miss those Guinness-fuelled evenings bitching about Bugaboos and people who can't stop talking about the cost of childcare.
With all that out of the way I'll start at the beginning. Well, not the very beginning, not that steamy night last August at a hotel in India, that would definitely be TMI. But I'll start at the part where I first had a vague inkling that after eight years we may have actually scored.
We'd been out for a family dinner and when I got home a little voice in my head whispered: "I think maybe you're pregnant". "I think maybe you're out of your mind," I whispered back, but the seed, as it were, had been sown.
Unfortunately, it was around midnight on a Sunday when this exchange occurred. I now know there are no chemists open in Dublin on a Sunday night because I made my boyfriend drive around for an hour so I could buy a pregnancy test. The next morning I made him get up so we could be at the chemist at 7am. I bought three different brands. To be on the safe side.
They are very fancy these days, pregnancy tests. The first one I tried had nothing as old-fashioned as a thin blue line, instead it declared "YOU ARE PREGNANT! PREGGERS! KNOCKED UP! " in a little screen. The other two said pretty much the same thing. I went straight out and bought a bumper packet of folic acid to celebrate.
A few weeks later I thought I'd better ring a hospital. I know the venue is a carefully planned decision for a lot of people, but the thought process went pretty much like this for me: my seven brothers and sisters were born there, I was born there, all my older sister's children were born there . . . "er, hello, is that Holles Street?" The woman said I had to answer some questions. The first one was: "Date of marriage?" I don't need to tell regular readers that this question had me leaping onto the highest stallion I could find as in "What do you mean date of marriage? Maybe I'm not married! I didn't know you needed to be married to have a child! This is 2008, not 1958," and so on and so forth until the very patient woman sighed and said "Look, there's a lot of questions on this list and if you are going to be like that about all of them, we'll be here all day." Which shut me up until she asked "Religion?" I quickly calmed down again when she read out a list of a gazillion possibilities that included both "none" and "Buddhist" and, I think even, "David Icke". We were great pals by the end.
I have to be very honest here and say that being pregnant is not much different to my regular lifestyle. I spend much of the time horizontal on the sofa, remote control in hand, asking my boyfriend to fetch icy pints of diluted lemon drinks and blueberry yoghurt. No change there, then. Still I know I'm changing, if only on the inside. I have vivid dreams where I am in a house with a new extension, and it's spotless, and I've done all the cleaning myself, which is unheard of.
And for the first time I can look at my wobbly belly and feel something approaching love. After years of the odd stranger saying "when are you due?" I can go "Early May!" instead of "Um, I'm not actually pregnant."
To conclude. Pregnancy: Generally A Good Thing in my limited experience and that's the last I will say on the subject. Until at least next week, anyway.
roisin@irish-times.ie