A couple of weeks ago I was sick. Not badly sick, just a little queasy and off my food. Heartburney. Bloaty. Tired. Blah. Heavy-and-crampy-feeling in the abdomen. And just a smidgen nocturic. Also, I was having some insanely vivid dreams, largely of a sexual nature. It went on like this for nearly a week.

There was a time I would have believed that nothing but IVF would help us conceive. That time was before Surprise Baby. Now, apparently, I am willing to believe that strange things can happen, even though they usually don't. I believe it enough, at least, to use a pregnancy test even though I am still breastfeeding and amenorrhoeic, we have been using two types of contraception (one of which is "teething baby"), and our track record at getting knocked up is not exactly stellar by most people's standards.

I sat in the bathroom staring at the unused test for a long time, just hesitating. I realised eventually that I was trying to work out how I'd feel about either result so I could brace myself appropriately. I'm not really sure I could handle another baby so soon. But I'm not so far removed from infertility that I could honestly think of an unplanned pregnancy as anything but miraculous and exciting. In the end I couldn't resolve the question either way, so I took a deep breath and piddled on the stick.

It was negative. Even then, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Over a week later, I'm still not sure.

--

I finally managed to catch up with a book recommended by Miss E (password protected): Motherstyles. It's based on the Myer's-Briggs personality typing system. "I just can't work out if I'm perceiving or judging," I said to Mr Bea.

Mr Bea regarded me for a few seconds with a raised eyebrow and a bemused smile. "Can't you?" he said mildly, and then went straight back to what he was doing. I narrowed my eyes.

The next morning, I tore myself away from the conversation I was having with The Prata Baby about electricity to clear the breakfast dishes. I had just picked them up when he requested I read him a book about sharks. "Oh that's right!" I said, setting the dishes back down on the table again. "I was going to sticky-tape that torn page back together and I never got around to it! Let's get the shark book right now and do that."

I collected the necessary supplies together and we sat down at the coffee table to perform the surgery. Struck with inspiration, The Prata Baby requested his "special scissors for people in my agegroup" and the roll of tape. "Yes, great idea!" I affirmed. "We can do some cutting and sticky-taping. What can we cut up? How about... this piece of junk mail?" I suggested, picking a furniture catalogue up from where it lay, just nearby. PB thought that was a great idea. I glanced around for something to stick our cuttings onto, and noticed the cereal box still sitting on the table. Soon, I had torn it from around its contents, flattened it out next to us, scissored out a picture of a storage-box-cum-stool and a cup of coffee, and stuck them down onto our cereal-box "house".

"Box," I said for Surprise Baby's benefit. "Coffee." She cruised around the coffee table observing everything with keen interest. I gave her the sticky tape.

"Now," I said to both members of my audience, "we should choose some furniture," and I started flicking through the catalogue, naming various items for SB, discussing several tenets of interior design and decoration at length, listening carefully to PB's plans to fill the structure with water and sea creatures and have all the people swim around it in scuba gear, and googling for information on dolphins. After twenty or thirty minutes it suddenly occurred to me that no dishes had been cleared, the cereal was, if anything, less away than when I'd started, everyone was sitting around in their underwear, the stroller was completely unpacked, and we were already running several minutes late in getting out the door to kindy. And the worst part of it was that the only headway we had made on our pretend house was to add (at PB's suggestion) a second cup of coffee and a babyccino, as if I was deliberately trying to make a statement, in collage, about art mimicking life.

I figured I was probably perceiving.

It may be why I have trouble fitting in much blogging these days. I have tried, as you know, to find ways to carve out more spare time, and I have even used your suggestions, but somehow anything I save seems to slip through my fingers. On top of that, as an INTP, the social and feeling nature of the ALI community is a lot for me to handle after a full day's being social and emotional at home. I find myself wanting to shut off the computer in favour of some frothy TV sitcom. Maybe it's nothing to do with Myers-Briggs. Maybe I just don't drink enough coffee.