Hello. Lovely to meet you . . . .

So, welcome on board the Good Ship Bumparella (or perhaps that should be the Good Barge Bumparella, as in 'barge-arse', as in maybe I should give up the post-dinner bowl of cereal with rice pudding chaser!)

I've been meaning to start this blog since I first fell pregnant. Then I blinked and popped and here we are at 27 weeks with the glory of morning sickness behind us and the joy of acid reflux ahead. Woo hoo!

Actually, the timing doesn't matter but the reasons for writing do. They are, in no particular order:

1. Fertility - specifically to tell it like it is, open the closet, debunk the myths, come clean, air the dirty maternity knickers!

Like many of you, I got the equivalent of a masters degree in how NOT to get pregnant through my teens and twenties. But what about when you really WANT to have a baby and you're in danger of leaving it too late because the magazines showed you lots of impossibly wrinkle-free famous women having babies 'naturally' in their 40s ("yes you can conceive a baby and you can also have a perfect complexion by drinking 2 litres of water a day and wearing sunscreen!")

But the uber-famous and their publicists aren't totally to blame. The cone of silence also seems to descend on families and friends. It seems we like to keep information about our private lives a little too private when it comes to important stuff like how to make babies. I reckon some secret women's business should be shared with more women, especially those we love - our little sisters, nieces, daughters, best friends. We need to go tribal girls.

So that's what I'm doing here - I want to share my story with the women in my inner posse. Wouldn't do the men any harm to listen in either! I want to say, simply “If you definitely want to have children in your future, you need to think about these issues now.” Let’s get the knowledge out there. Let’s stop hiding our miscarriages and fertility treatments and grief and pass on these stories to the girls and women in our family so that the cycle of sadness and regret ends.

I would hate to hear the words “I didn’t realise . . . ” from a sister or friend desperately trying to conceive and know that I didn’t speak up and share.

2. To Remember - Don't ask me if I was "all out the front" or whether my veins popped out or when I first felt movement with my first baby 7 years ago. I can't remember! But I wish I could. So here I am, jotting it all down so that when the young ladies in my family get knocked up and ask me for details on exactly how many litres of Mylanta I chugged a week, I will have the answers immediately to hand (no more than a litre I swear!)

3. For Christianne - My gorgeous 25 year old step-daughter is travelling through Italy at the moment, eating plenty of gelato, navigating foreign loos and brushing off the frequent advances of overly amorous Latin Lotharios, and she's not coming back for SIX WHOLE MONTHS (sniff) so this is a great way of keeping her up to date with the goings-on in the space formerly known as my six-pack ;)

4. To Share - with you. If you feel like it, I'd love to hear your story.