I dreamed my pregnancy!
Thursday 30th October 2008
Taking a slurp of tea, Mum looked at me and smiled.
'When are you going to give me a ginger nut?' she asked.
'Oh, Mum,' I sighed, in mock annoyance.
'I want one,' she grumbled.
'You and me both,' I replied.
Unfortunately, we weren't talking about the biscuit variety. I could walk into any supermarket and load my trolley up with as many packets of those as I wanted. Mum was referring to her future grandchild. My fiancé, Justin Johnson, 30, was a strawberry blond and we imagined our children would have his ginger hair.
Sadly, unlike the biscuit, our very own ginger nut was proving hard to come by. At 28, I'd been with Justin, an oil rig engineer, for 12 years. Two years earlier, I'd come off the Pill and we'd started trying for a baby. But it hadn't happened. Not only that, since stopping the Pill, my periods had stopped too. After a year, I'd gone to the doctor.
'Leave it a bit longer,' he'd suggested.
Almost another year on, I was fast running out of patience. As my periods were irregular,
I had no way of knowing if I was pregnant or not. So, once a month, I'd raid my stash of pregnancy kits. Now, I'm quite a positive person, but 24 negative pregnancy tests would get even the most optimistic person down.
'I really, really want a little ginger nut,' I sighed to Mum now.
'You will,' she assured me.
But I couldn't just sit around taking tests for another year. I had to take action.
So, I made an appointment with my GP, who referred me to Hope Hospital, in Salford. I had a scan and some blood tests.
'The results will be back in six weeks,' the nurse said.
I'd waited two years, but six weeks sounded a lifetime.
'Especially at the moment,' I moaned to Justin.
I did tae kwon do and, earlier that week, I'd broken my foot during training.
Justin was away on the oil rigs two weeks out of every five so, over those following weeks, I hobbled round, hoping the tests wouldn't show anything serious. Everything will be OK, I kept telling myself. But six weeks on, sat beside Justin in the doctor's office, everything wasn't OK.
'You have polycystic ovary syndrome,' the doctor said.
'And that is?' I frowned.
'Your ovaries are covered in cysts,' he explained.
I listened, as he told me that normally, follicles inside the ovaries mature for ovulation every month. One follicle matures fully and releases an egg. But in polycystic ovarian syndrome, the follicles don't mature enough to release an egg.
'That's why you don't have periods,' he added matter-of-factly.
'What does this mean for me?' I asked shakily.
'Well there is treatment,' he smiled.
'You could try fertility drugs, which might kick-start your periods.
Then, if you're not pregnant after six months, you could try IVF.'
Back in the car, I burst into tears. I hadn't considered that there might actually be something wrong with me.
Ever the optimist, I'd assumed the doctor would tell me that everything looked normal and it was just a matter of time before I fell pregnant.
'What are we going to do?' I cried to Justin.
Then he dropped the bombshell.
'I think we should wait until after we're married to start any treatment,' he said.
Was he crazy?
Our wedding was in October 2007. That was 14 months away.
'Fertility treatment will be tough,' he said gently. 'It will be too stressful on top of
a wedding.'
Deep down, I knew he was talking sense. But, as tears rolled down my face, I felt like I could actually hear my biological clock ticking. I'd be 30 when we started trying. And what if it didn't work? Back home, I phoned Mum to tell her the bad news.
'Oh love,' she sighed.
'It'll happen for you.'
I could only dream. Snuggled up to Justin in bed that night, I felt drained. All I wanted was to be a mum. Was that really too much to ask?
As my eyelids grew heavier, sleep sucked me under, slowly numbing the sadness. Then, all
of a sudden, I was a mum. I was sitting outside in the garden, the sun beating down.
Cuddled into the crook of my arm, was a little boy.
'Mama,' he said.
He was gorgeous! His hair was so blond, it almost looked white. He had the biggest blue eyes and the cutest cherub face.
'Do you love Mummy?' I asked, hugging him close.
He nodded and snuggled in even closer. Suddenly, I started singing.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are grey…
My son was grinning up at me, and I remember feeling insanely happy. And that's when I woke up.
I panicked. Where was my baby? Then, rubbing my bleary eyes, I realised I was in bed. Justin was snoring gently beside me. The alarm clock on his bedside table read 2am.
'Oh,' I sighed, my heart sinking.
It had just been a dream. I wasn't a mum. There was no baby. Sinking back into my pillow, I tried to go back to sleep. But as I tossed and turned, I couldn't shake the dream. It had been so real, I had this overwhelming feeling that I really was pregnant.
Don't be silly, I told myself. Go back to sleep.
I was infertile, not pregnant.
Eventually, I dropped off.
But the next morning, as I got ready for my job as an office manager at a legal firm, the dream played over and over in my head. You're pregnant, a voice inside my brain teased.
I shook my head, trying to think straight.
'You OK, love?' Justin asked.
'Fine,' I lied.
I didn't want to mention the dream to him. He'd think I was crazy. But all day, I thought about that blasted dream.I'd catch my hand drifting down, resting protectively on my flat belly. The voice was there too, teasing.
You're pregnant, Lynette. Take a test.
When I arrived home that night, I couldn't stand it any longer. I ran upstairs to
my wardrobe, grabbed a test and locked myself in the bathroom. I closed my eyes while I waited for the result. Ten seconds, twenty seconds…
'No way!' I gasped, staring at the plastic wand.
There, in front of me, was a clear blue line. I was pregnant!
Shock makes you do the funniest things. I was due at my tae kwon do class. So, without a word to Justin, I got changed, swung my bag over my shoulder and walked out the door.
I stayed for the whole class before realisation finally struck.
'The dream was right,' I gasped to myself. 'I'm pregnant!'
I raced home and flew into Justin's arms.
'We're having a baby!' I shrieked.
He must have thought I'd flipped.
'Oh, honey,' he sighed. 'What makes you think that?'
When I shoved the test under his nose, it was his turn to go into shock.
'Amazing!' he gasped, hugging me.
We didn't tell everyone right away. My brother, Nicholas, 36, was emigrating to Australia the
following week.
'We should announce it the morning he flies,' I suggested.
It would be our going away present. In the meantime, I went to the doctor to have my pregnancy confirmed. I gave him a urine sample and a couple of days later, he called.
'Congratulations!' he said. 'You're definitely pregnant.'
Although polycystic ovarian syndrome makes it harder to conceive naturally, it's not impossible. I'd been lucky.
That Saturday, my sister, Amanda Healey, 32, her husband, David, 40, and their two children, Caitlin, 7, and Frazer, 3, gathered at Mum's house. We'd arranged to meet Nicholas
at the airport. But before we left, I handed Mum a little envelope.
'What's this?' she asked, puzzled.
'Open it,' I urged.
She ripped at the paper, revealing a single ginger nut biscuit. There was a second's silence as the penny dropped. Then…
'You're pregnant!' she screamed.
Amanda jumped round the room like a deranged frog. While Mum hugged me so tight, I thought she'd never let me come up for air. Nicholas's reaction was just as enthusiastic.
'Congratulations, sis!' he cried, scooping me up off the floor.
Over the next few weeks, the only people I told about my dream were Justin and Mum. They thought it was both weird and wonderful.
'Fancy learning that you're pregnant in a dream,' Mum marvelled.
Because I'd dreamed about a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy, I didn't even consider the fact that I might have a girl. I even chose a name for him, Flynn.
But in March 2007, suffering from dangerously high blood pressure, I was given an emergency Caesarean section at Hope Hospital. I had a 7lb 15oz baby girl! We named her Darcy. In October, aged just 7 months, Darcy was our flower girl when Justin and I tied the knot at the Marriott Hotel, in Worsley. Now, aged 19 months, she's growing up fast.
Although she's the spit of Justin, she's not a ginger nut. She has my light brown hair.
So my dream wasn't entirely right. Or was it? One day, I'll tell Darcy all about
my dream. Who knows? By then, her blond, blue-eyed younger brother might be here to listen to the story, too.