Sinead Corcoran Dye pregnancy diary: ‘I know how lucky I am . . . but so far I hate being pregnant’

Sinead Corcoran Dye opens up about her IVF journey and her first four months of pregnancy. Photo / Dean Purcell

Each fortnight, Sinead Corcoran Dye shares her take on her path to parenthood.

I’m 30 and a half years old and I’m pregnant with my first child, through IVF.

We had to do IVF because my husband has fertility issues, which I made sure to remind him of every night when I was injecting myself and vomiting in the kitchen sink from the hormones.

I know it sounds mean in theory to blame your partner, but it’s fine, you can. You can do anything you want when you’re the one stabbing yourself with needles and all they have to do is have a merry time into a cup.

We actually did all of this IVF stuff a year ago, and then froze our embryos to use after our wedding last October – which is cool because it means our daughter is like a little weird time traveller from the past.

We know she’s a girl because we had non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) done. It’s a non-funded blood test you’re offered around 10 weeks that screens pregnancies for chromosomal conditions like Down Syndrome and also finds out the gender.

We got pregnant almost immediately after we got home from our wedding, which is another thing I blame my husband for.

He warned me that he’d read the first embryo transfer often doesn’t work – and the fertility clinic was closing down for Christmas, so we mentally prepared ourselves to try again in February.

He was trying to be supportive and stop me getting my hopes up – but it worked first go. As a result, I had to miserably quit vaping and drinking for the entire summer, while all my friends were partying in the sun.

I spent Christmas and New Year’s a withered husk on the couch suffering hyperemesis gravidarum, or extreme morning sickness (more on that another week), and furiously swiping through Insta stories of happy, fetus-free people slamming cans of Pals at festivals.

The cool thing about IVF in theory is that you (fingers crossed) know exactly when you’re (hopefully) going to get pregnant, because after doing all the injections they book you in for a specific day and time to have your embryo transferred.

This means (though it’s probably not encouraged) you can ingest whatever you want right up until your last night of freedom.

So naturally, I had spent the last year smashing “last supper” chili margaritas every night right up until my embryo transfer day.

I thought this would mean that come finding out I was pregnant, I would feel completely satisfied that I’d had enough fun times. I also thought that when you get pregnant you feel so maternal and wholesome that the thought of nicotine and booze is just repulsive to you.

Horrendously, this has not been the case for me. I am currently four months pregnant, and I fantasise about margaritas every night.

A kind and wise maternity nurse told me recently that you can desperately want your baby and still hate being pregnant – the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I try to remind myself of this when it’s a Friday night and I’m violently craving a cocktail while trying to decipher the differences between pram brands.

Long story short, I know how lucky I am, and I can’t wait to have my baby – but so far, I hate being pregnant.

I wish I was a Kardashian so I could afford a surrogate. I’m hoping this all changes and I stop hankering after hard spirits and instead start doing something good and normal like prenatal yoga. But either way, I’ll keep you posted each fortnight.

In the meantime, have a drink for me.