Episode 1 – Conception

I feel the wind tickle my moustache as I sternly rap my knuckles on the door. The pool scoop is heavy on my bare shoulders, but the weight helps to accentuate the triceps I just worked at the gym. The door tentatively creaks open, but stops leaving a gap just big enough for me to see her beautiful face peering through the slender gap.

‘I’m here to clean your pool’ I say in a voice deep enough to make Barry White sound like a choir boy. ‘I don’t have a pool’ she says coyly, a cheeky smile breaking across her lightly tanned face. ‘But why don’t you and that pool scoop come inside anyway’……..

Actually I think that may be someone else’s conception story. Or just the start of a movie that had too much of an impact on me as a young man. So maybe I should just get back to our story instead.

It was time (apparently). The push from the would-be grandparents was on in earnest, with not so subtle reminders that I wasn’t getting any younger. Memories of the procession of injuries I picked up in my last year of soccer some 4yrs ago did make me nervous though – if I could pull a groin muscle just trying to head a soccer ball, how on earth was my body going to hold up to the rigours of repetitive love making.

On top of the injury concerns was the ageing state of the weapony I had at my disposal. Back in the glory days it felt like I was a tireless shooter, all amped up on cheap cigarettes and jugs of Illusion, running around with a rapid fire machine gun. These days it feels like I’m shooting with an antique single shot muscat, where after each shot it needs to be meticulously taken apart, and given a good clean. Not to mention the hearty meal and 8hr nap I need before even thinking about trying to fire another round.

But if I was apprehensive about ‘trying’ I can only imagine what my wife was thinking. The poor girl was about to be subjected repeatedly to my 2-move love making routine (where move 1 is to cock one eyebrow and say ‘it’s an ad break in the footy – how about it’). I did notice that in preparation she had changed the blinds and the new ones seemed to block out an extraordinary amount of light. And she had been flicking almost obsessively though old ‘Smash Hits’ magazines to stock up on some Bon Jovi mental imagery. Anyway, the calender rolled around and suddenly it was ‘game day’. And I’m not talking about some complicated ovulation, temperature check matrix calendar. I’m talking about just the regular calendar that said it was a Saturday, meaning that the post surf but pre grocery shopping session awaited.

The whole experience feels a bit different when it is couched around ‘trying to make a baby’. Rather than just ‘going for it’ a whole bunch of other issues start running through your head. Is there a certain angle I should be trying for? Should I have sat on a hot water bottle before we kicked off? Will the big night last night impact the quality of my ammunition? Thankfully about half way through the session (so somewhere around the 20-30second mark) I felt a sense of calm. Suddenly I was Trent Skywalker, gliding over the surface of the Death Star and using the force to help guide me towards any weakness in the ovarian wall. Before Krys could even get through humming the intro to ‘Living on a Prayer’ the shot was away and I was gliding my way contendedly back to base (which rather than the intergalactic planet of Alderaan, was instead our lounge with a cupcake, a coffee and some back episodes of 4 Corners).

But apparently my Jedi inspired effort was not enough for some. Krys was pretty insistant that we needed a few unscheduled sessions to make sure we were really giving the babymaking the effort it deserved. I couldn’t help but think that Krys was more responding to the nice haircut I got from the local barber on Sunday afternoon, and was using the ruse of babymaking to now try and steal herself a little ‘extra sugar’. I had to remain firm and not get bullied into over exersion. The only other mating program I was aware of that reached the absurd heights of 3 efforts inside a week was that of the bush bilby, and he dies at the end of his efforts. Krys helpfully pointed out that the bilby patterns were more like 10 sessions a day, and that if death was a consequence for me, then it was a risk she was willing to take.

Thankfully our first checkpoint rolled around just in time to save me from being reduced to a shivering, exhausted mess on a forest floor. And at first look it appeared that the muscat, while becoming antique in age, may have had some unnerving accuracy. There was only one way to confirm this though – so in amongst the morning shop of bread, milk and moisturiser (my face gets a little dry after a swim) was a little stick which, when combined with some urine, had the potential to indicate that spousal approval for boys ski trips may be about to become a lot more difficult.

Krys retired to the bathroom with the magic stick and some pleading in her ears for some stream accuracy (the cleaner had just been and I wasn’t keen on having to remop the floor). She must have been apprehensive as her response to what I thought was a simple request suggested that maybe I should go and conduct some babymaking actions on myself (well not in so many words). Anyway, with the test done (with a clear floor – well done hon) we now had to wait the 5mins to find out whether the Ovarian Death Star defences had been breached.

So what to do in that 5mins? It isn’t really long enough to finish off last nights episode of Swamp People. It is probably plenty of time for a backup baby making effort but that seems like a bit of a waste at this point, especially given the surf looks good and I should really conserve energy. So after awkardly sitting through a song and a half of morning music video clips (gee current music is garbage – I think Kenny Rogers is primed for a career relaunch) it was back to the bathroom for a stick inspection.

There is a second line!!!…… we think…… It is pretty faint. I haven’t seen such uncertainty since Krys was asked the question ‘Do you take this man’ in the church about 5months ago. So Krys does another test. Again there is a second line but again it isn’t that strong. It’s almost like the test was trying to communicate with us, and say that yes, Krys was pregnant. But my contribution to the gene mix was not adequate enough for the test to give its full approval. We debated whether I should do a stick test too to make sure that the second lines were real, but the potential of me returning a second line was a risk I wasn’t willing to take. While a positive Trent test would help to partly explain my post wedding blow out, getting confirmation that some of my feminine tendancies have a deeper meaning was something I just didn’t want to face at this point in time.

So it looks like we were having a baby! Now what to do with the confirmation stick? We considered keeping it but then realised that a urine soaked stick may not be a keepsake that stands the test of time. So we took a photo instead. It looks like life is going to change a fair bit from here on……….