My Psychic Stepmother

My step mother has been married to my Dad for about 15 years, but I have known her all my life. She also happens to be my Godmother and was my Mum's best friend at school (a different story for another time, my mum passed away when I was 16, almost 20 years ago). She is someone that I trust implicitly and have a great deal of respect for. WSM (Wicked Step Mother, as she calls herself)  has never hidden her 'psychic senses' from us, even as young children. I always saw it as something quite normal, probably because she is so down to earth and doesn't turn it into some sort of ridiculous spectacle.  She is very spiritual and never forces her spirituality or psychic messages upon anyone. She has a degree in psychology, worked as a primary school teacher for most of her working life and is incredibly intuitive. Although I say I am sceptical I'm not sure I actually am. I think I say that so other people don't think I'm crazy when I talk about it. There have been too many things that she has predicted for it to be simple coincidence.

I don't fully understand how WSM experiences these psychic happenings. I know that she can sense spirits and sometimes sees them. I know that she can see people's auras and feel them. I know that she can read palms. But mostly, she just says things at random, often with an "ooh I felt a really strong psychic shiver then, look at my goose bumps". About 3 years ago or so she was reading my palm, when she said "I can see twins. Well this is strange, I've known for a very long time that I would be grandmother to twins, but never considered that it could be through you as my stepdaughter, I'll be amazed if I am wrong about this". Her son and his wife finally had a child about seven years ago after three failed IVF attempts and there was no chance of them having any more. Her daughter, in her late thirties, had severe endometriosis and had married a man 23 years her senior, so WSM had written off any chance of grandchildren through them. I got quite excited about the thought of having twins, being a twin myself I know how incredible it is. I held on to this one message and didn't worry when I didn't fall pregnant straight away. It doesn't matter I thought, I know I'm going to have twins at some point in the future. About two years later WSM called me 'I have some amazing news she said, I'm going to be a grandmother again, Laura is pregnant with twins, we're all so surprised and delighted!' My heart sank. I felt awful that I didn't feel happier for Laura. Of course this was amazing for her, it turned out they had been trying for seven years since they had got married. I hid my feelings from WSM, but I think she knew how upset I was that it wasn't me who was pregnant with twins and that clearly when she had been psyching in with me a few years ago, she had been psyching in to her life and not mine.

When we met up just after Christmas (2013) she experienced one of those feelings again. Since we have started on the IVF journey a lot of conversations are often dominated by the talk of potential babies. As we were chatting she said "you will have a baby next year", but she said it with such certainty that she surprised herself by the force of her statement. I asked if it was her speaking or the spirits. She wasn't entirely sure and said it was probably a mix of both. She then suggested something I had never tried before; dowsing, not the type where you use a stick to find water, but pendulum dowsing. I believe it is an old technique that was often used to predict the gender of unborn babies.

Pendulum dowsing works by holding a pendulum (usually a necklace) over your palm and asking the spirits to answer yes/no questions. The pendulum will either swing back and forth or go around in circles. The first thing you need to establish is which one means yes and which one means no. So you ask questions that you already know the answer to. We sat at the kitchen table and began, my Dad and DH looking at us somewhat bemused - I'm not sure either of them really believes in any of this. WSM used her own necklace and pendant and held it out above my palm, after doing some sort of ritual to ensure the spirits were happy to help us. After we had established that a circular motion meant yes and a forward and backward motion meant no, we started asking the questions that we really wanted to know the answers to. I wasn't quite sure where to start and I can't now remember everything that we asked, but this is what I do remember:
Will I have a baby next year? Yes
Will I have twins? No
Will the baby be a girl? Yes
Will the baby be a boy? No
For some reason I felt a bit embarrassed asking the questions. I asked WSM if I could ask the questions in my head, not a problem she answered. I think I did this in case I got answers that I didn't want. It also meant that WSM couldn't subconsciously influence the movement of the pendant, as she had no idea what I was asking. I started by testing the method and asking the same questions that I had already asked, I got the exact same answers. I started asking a few more risky questions:
Will the baby be healthy? the pendulum was slow to move, it started by circling, then changed to moving back and forth. "I think that's a no" WSM said. She must have noticed a reaction in my face, as she asked if I was OK with that answer. I nodded and said it was fine. I didn't want to tell anyone what I had asked, so I kept it to myself.
Will this cycle of IVF be successful? No
Will I have a baby next year? Yes
I started to doubt things. My planned IVF cycle would finish with the embryo transfer at the end of March, which would mean a Christmas baby. If this IVF cycle isn't successful the only other way I'd be having a baby this year would be if I got pregnant naturally before the start of the IVF treatment - highly unlikely.
Will I conceive naturally? Nothing, no movement from the pendulum at all. WSM looked at me and said "you're obvioulsy not meant to know the answer to that question"
We finished the dowsing, but I was left feeling confused. I decided just to take on board the answers that I liked,  such as 'yes, I will be having a baby next year'. I'll find out soon enough whether this dowsing malarkey has any value or whether it is just a load of mumbo-jumbo!