Balance

It's Rob who says everything balances up. And Lo! It came to pass!

My hard-working colleague was uncharacteristically off or working at home last week. She was back this morning in good time to watch me roll in late, as is not uncommon. When she asked me to hang about for a 'quick word', I'm expecting some (deserved) censure of my timekeeping, esp. because she's been noticeably irritable in the last few weeks.

But no- she has some news. She is unexpectedly preggers. She is unexpectedly very preggers.

I'm careful not to betray any reaction till hers can be gauged. But as she talks, her face start to shine with happiness and clearly it's the best news ever. She's 18 weeks gone- halfway through- without having suspected a thing.

Today I learned she's been undergoing investigations of her 5 month amenorrhoea at the high-falutin', five-star Dept of Reproductive Medicine of the local teaching hospital. Bloods have been taken for hormone assays, to assess her for ?premature menopause and to exclude nasties like a pituitary tumour. Both she (a very bright life-sciences graduate) and the high-falutin' docs had rejected the most common cause of amenorrhoea in their differential diagnoses, since an IUD boasts a 99.5% success rate at preventing pregnancy.

It was a new GP, passing on my colleague's spectacularly normal hormone assay results, who suggested excluding the obvious. A urinalysis there and then saw the twin lines form in the hCG test's window, and that's when it started to snowball.

God bless the NHS, within 2 days she'd had an ultrasound to estimate dates, to seek the wandering coil and to exclude an ectopic pregnancy. GP couldn't palpate a pregnancy (and she's not showing at all), so estimated dates at 8-9 weeks. Um, no. On ultrasound no coil anywhere, but a huge, beautiful, sound and entirely unexpected intra-uterine foetus of 18 weeks gestation, waving hello to its parents. She showed me the scans, which brought tears to my eyes for her happiness, the beautiful babbiness and the memory of mine. This will be the best thing that ever happened for her, and, smart woman, she already knows it. Now she needs to learn to take a lunch-break.