I've gone and got knocked up. Got myself in trouble, bun in the oven,
all the clichés of pregnancy that good Catholic (unmarried) girls should avoid.
Pregnant and HIV positive; a state of being that 10 years ago would have been
met with effusions of pity and foreboding. So how do I feel? Pretty good actually.
I would love to take the moral high ground and claim that my pregnancy was
planned with SAS precision and facilitated with a gleaming, sterile turkey-baster.
But I'd be lying. More like a one-off act of Easter abandon, probably brought
on by the heady excesses of too many chocolate eggs. I suppose I could be
held up as a harsh example to teenage girls in convent schools - you only
need to do it once to get pregnant. Okay, I may have done the unclean deed
many times more than once, but it was one time unprotected and BANG, up the
duff. Not bad going for a 35-year-old, with geriatric ovaries, hurtling to
menopause.
I found out I was enceinte in Geneva, attending an HIV conference about spreading the message on safe sex. Oh dear, I should be tarred and feathered and paraded through the streets as a monstrous hypocrite. I did a wee on the pregnancy stick in my hotel room, expecting the result to be negative, but a faint blue line appeared screaming: "You've got a bun in the oven girlfriend."
Reeling, I picked up the phone and called the first person that came to mind at midnight - my HIV doctor. He was wonderfully reassuring and congratulatory, despite his patient from Hell calling hysterically in the middle of the night. He reassured me that the risk of transmission to the baby was less than one per cent as I had an undetectable viral load and, more surprisingly, that I didn't need to change my medication. My blind panic began a metamorphosis into pleasure (with just a mignon of fear).
My partner was paralysed with shock when I told him and promptly rushed out to buy a silver Jaguar XK8. Just the car for a new baby - not. Perhaps it was the desperate act of attempting to clutch at his carefree youth, which would soon be slipping through his fingers. Or perhaps a celebration of his virility (he clearly wasn't shooting blanks). He has become rather pleasantly supportive and even turns a blind eye to my slovenly slothfulness. He doesn't yet recognise the importance of buying baby Dolce & Gabbana and Ralph Lauren for the new arrival, but I'm working on him.
The first three months of pregnancy haven't been too bad. I haven't been sick,
despite the fact that in my two previous pregnancies I chucked up for England
every day. I have been feeling exhausted and have fallen asleep a couple of
times at my desk (I think my colleagues feared I'd been out partying every
night). Mild pregnancy stress-incontinence doesn't go so well with the hay
fever season and sneezing all day, but at least it's encouraging me to do
my pelvic floor exercises.
I've been advised to give up high heels as I've developed a painful pelvic condition. My doctor doesn't seem to understand that the pain in my pelvis pales into insignificance by comparison with the emotional pain of wearing bad shoes.
I kept my pregnancy very quiet until I had my 12-week scan. I was terrified that my medication would lead to some gross deformity in the baby. It was wonderful seeing it with all its bits in order, showing the finger to the doctor doing the scan. I can't decide whether to have a Caesarean or vaginal delivery and I still worry about the tiny chance that the baby will have HIV. Everyone has been very positive about the news, with the exception of my youngest son who burst into tears when I told him, because he feared I'd make him move into the shed and give the baby his room. Silly thing. The best news in my pregnancy was hearing that the same obstetrician who delivered Leo Blair will also deliver my baby. Imagine, I'll be linked to the Prime Minister's wife through my vagina.
