Pregnancy & Baby 

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Josa’s pregnancy diary up to week 10

Josa Young has 2 children aged eleven and eight. She’s now 41 and has discovered she’s expecting again. Here’s the first 10 weeks of her pregnancy diary.

Things don’t always go according to plan

Since my son was born in 1992, I have kept babies at bay by using purely natural methods. This has been simple because I have a very regular 34-day cycle, and always ovulate around days 17 to 19. However, a certain recklessness might have crept in latterly. We are both in our early forties, and there was an unspoken sense of now or never, and we had always kept the door slightly ajar. This is not to say we were doing anything on purpose at all – I wouldn’t dare. Our lives are not so secure as to make more babies a consequence-free venture. But something funny happened – an egg rolled down the shute a few days early I believe, and bingo . . . And Professor Lord Winston says that 50% of women over 40 are already infertile.

Pregnancy is dated from the last menstrual period – referred to as LMP. My last period started on 19 April. When you watch your cycle closely, any blip is very obvious. There is no doubt that, towards the end of the cycle, I did begin to feel slightly odd.

For the days between LMP and around 8 or 9 May, I wasn’t of course pregnant at all. But as soon as the ovum is fertilised, while on its way down the fallopian tube, things begin to happen very fast. Seven days later (week 3 LMP), it reaches the womb where it drifts around, dividing all the time, for another week (week 4 LMP) before coming to rest and burrowing into the lining.

Testing time

I was peeing a little more than usual. I couldn’t believe anything had happened – I didn’t remember taking any risks, but I chucked the cheapest pregnancy test into my supermarket trolley as I happened to be passing. I did the test the next day, when I was four days late. The result was unequivocal – a deep magenta spot appeared almost immediately. I felt surprise, and oddly, embarrassment. ‘At my age!’ I thought. ‘What will people say?’ I was already five-and-a-half weeks LMP.

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