“Fulfilling My Motherhood Dharma

     Conception, like pregnancy and birth, arrives in many ways. Hav-ing had 6 pregnancies in my life, due to my intrinsically high fertility, I have never suffered the frustration of having to work at becoming pregnant for months on end. On the contrary, my frustrations have usually been of a different nature – accepting unplanned pregnancies! Through the wisdom of hindsight, I have come to see extra and more subtle elements in them. Each of my stories has an interesting twist to it. Whilst some of my conclusions may not be provable, to me they are definite realities and provide evidence of the deeper levels of manifesta-tion than we normally ascribe to these things

Angela – Number 1

     As a young girl, I dreamed about being the mother of a big family. My own family consisted of myself and 2 brothers, an elder by 4 years and a younger by 3 years, and I had often wished for some closer, and preferably female siblings to play with. As a young, sexually active woman I was pretty reckless about contraception. My mother was a proponent of the Billing’s method (see Chapter 3 – “Natural Fertility Awareness”, page 95) and since I didn’t want to use artificial contracep-tion, I imagined I understood enough from her about my fertility to keep myself out of trouble.
     Just turned seventeen, and enjoying my first steady sexual relation-ship with a more sensible twenty-one year old, I talked him out of using condoms in favour of my natural approach. We didn’t have sex that often since he was pretty tense about it all and wasn’t able to really get full satisfaction because of the risk he perceived we were taking.
     One night, 2 days after my period had finished, when I was sure I would be safe, I lustily initiated sex, and for the first time, my boyfriend really let go like never before. As soon as sex was over we both looked at each other and I said – ”Now we’ve really done it, I bet there’s a baby.” Throughout the next 4 weeks, as I waited for my next period, I knew I was waiting in vain. Five weeks after that great sex, and with still no period arriving, I threw up into the rubbish bin whilst waiting for the train to school – all the confirmation I needed.
     I can now see that, even with the “safe” timing I thought I had, my intuition knew I was pregnant from that moment onwards until con-firmed. Some may just dismiss this as fear or paranoia, but it was not that. It was an undeniable knowing. Maybe every woman knows, deep in her mind, of any particular day when she is fertile, or more exactly when she may ovulate in a few days so that the sperm finds an egg in the fallopian tubes. Maybe there is something about fantastic sex with someone you love which can cause spontaneous ovulation, right out of the usual period. These hypotheses and my suspicions of this being the case, have only been more solidly confirmed in later years and through subsequent conceptions. I can also see now that an unconscious part of me wanted to get on with my childhood mothering dreams but my teenage perceptions and the social standards of that time clouded me from seeing what was really going on in myself.