Me having a coffee with a neighbourhood pooch as he does the dog pose under a cafe table.

My mind has been restless with worst case and next worse case scenarios over the last few days.  I’ve been steeling myself for potential heartbreak whilst trying to soldier on with the rest of my life.  The tea lady at work strongly suspects that I’m the reason her tea room gets drained of Jatz crackers every morning but she’s not let on yet.  I didn’t wear mascara to work and instead donned my largest and daggiest pair of wraparound sunglasses to work.  Unfortunately, I forgot to put that therapeutic bottle of champagne in the fridge to chill last night.

It was all in aid of today’s life defining moment.  The dreaded viability scan.  After the two week wait for The Blood Test comes the three week wait for The Scan.  Which happened late this morning.  For which I was so well prepared I drank 3 times the amount of water required an hour before kick off.  In those minutes before I was called in, crossing my legs and trying not to think of water conveniently cleared my mind of the negative and unfounded thoughts that previously cluttered it.

I’m really pregnant.  Pregnant in that reassuring and deeply comforting way when you can see for yourself on the big screen (and later with that framed take home snap of the ultrasound) what’s going on at a microscopic level inside you.  A heart that is beating (or rather flickering) at the rate it should be and a blob that measures the length it should for its gestational age.

It’s an emotional time for any woman but for me, it was surreal and unfamiliar as well.  A textbook scan and with it the reassurance that the rate of miscarriage from this point on has fallen to between 5 – 10%.  And it’s me we’re talking about!  It was just as well I didn’t have mascara on because I just lay there interrupting the tranquil darkness with loud and joyful sobs.  Let me tell you, it’s never a pretty time to be around me when those waterworks start.  Even when they started out of happiness.

Needless to say, the rest of the day after the scan has passed in a happy blur.

I had a celebratory chunk of chocolate caramel slice with lunch and was thus able to bypass the KFC drive through on the way home tonight.  I found a second wind that has enabled me to make dinner from scratch tonight rather than retreating to the freezer yet again.  But most happily of all, has been the time spent sharing the good news with the many beautiful people who’ve been along with Mr SSG and I on this at times harrowing and painful journey.

I’ve written thousands of words trying to describe how I’ve felt along the way but what I feel now can be distilled to 7 words – blessed, humbled and touched by a miracle.