Introduction
This entry is long overdue. It's also my longest entry to date. Here's why....
Alex and I spent much of 2023 going through several rounds of IVF without any success and, by Christmas of that year, we'd pretty much given up on trying for a second child. In my mind, I'd accepted that Theo would be my first and last child, and that was it. The Lottery that is life, I guess.
However, in January 2024, we received a call from our specialist. He'd been reviewing our case notes and discovered an interesting feature.
"You have a kink," he said.
"Just one? What about all of the whips and the chains and the bondage straps?"
There was a pause at the end of the line whilst the Good Doctor tried to make sense of that last sentence.
"Extra-curricular interests aside," he said, smiling. "You may have a kink in the entrance to your womb..."
"A 'kink'? What do you mean?"
"I've seen this feature before and it's rare but, yes, you appear to have a kink. And maybe we've found the reason why conception has proved so difficult. It's possible the sperm can't get past the obstruction."
"Okay," I said. "What does this mean?"
"It means that, armed with this knowledge, we'd like to try again," said the Doctor. "We still have two embryos in reserve and we can start you off straight away."
We went through one last round of fertility treatment and, by the end of March, I was pregnant.
This is what happened next...
Enter Sadie...
By the end of April 2024 I was already tired to the point of exhaustion and with seven months to go before Junior #2 put in an appearance, I just couldn't see a way forward. Even though Alex and I would happily share most of the housework, I just wasn't able to cope with the constant round of cooking, child care, building maintenance and, of course, my day job. To make matters worse, Alex had been offered a very lucrative position in Europe and, if he took the post then I'd be without his help for most of the summer and probably the early autumn, too.
Having insisted that we would never have another House Keeper again - the experience with Alice taught us a valuable lesson - we decided that we really did need another person to help out after all. We sent out invitations to the usual employment agencies and quickly settled on a lovely lady, Sadie. She was a good choice for several of reasons not least of which was because she'd just celebrated her sixtieth birthday so we knew she was sensible and mature, and I was certain that a more mature lady might encourage my husband to keep his dick in his pants for once. Read my past missives for further details on that score.
Sadie quickly became an essential feature of our household. We soon discovered that she had a warm, friendly personality and a fantastic sense of humour, and I liked her from the start. Best of all, she didn't suffer fools gladly, if at all, and she certainly didn't put up with any of my husband's bullshit.
By July, I was starting to look and feel very pregnant. My day job coupled with a heavy workload had taken its toll and I ended up missing a few deadlines simply because I felt too tired to continue. My Doctor took one look at my blood pressure and insisted that I had to stop working immediately. I quit my day job an hour later.
In time, Sadie and I became close and, when Alex announced that he was relocating to Latvia for a couple of months to head up a new factory build, we became closer still. I think both Sadie and I felt rather abandoned, frankly.
Sadie was a breath of fresh air. She wasn't an unrepentant exhibitionist like Alice and neither was she a chisel-jawed Iron Maiden like Kaz. She was calm and reserved, and didn't do anything that I'd class as 'stupid stuff', the way Alice did, and neither did her baggage manifest itself so obviously the way it did with Kaz.
[For those curious about Alice and Kaz - Alice was our housekeeper for several years whilst she finished her Doctorate. She was also a sex-obsessed exhibitionist and it became commonplace to walk into the kitchen and find Alice wearing nothing but a Digestive biscuit. I won't say anything about Kaz. You came hear to read some sexy vibes and... Kaz was a total buzzkill, frankly... ]
Evenings at home were the most fun. With the swimming pool up and running once again, and my neighbour Charlotte a near constant visitor, the watering hole became our go-to place for winding down. Sadie and Charlotte would be on the wine, I'd be on the mineral water.
Even though I was missing my husband, I still regard this period as one of the happiest I've known in several years. Warm and comfortable, and the perfect place to call home. The vibe, the feeling, the atmosphere was simply gorgeous.